The Pyrrhic Days
by Missie2
Summary: Fusion with Battle Royale. A class of thirty students from an ordinary high school are brought to an island and forced to kill each other until only one is left. Eight students in particular fight for their lives against impossible odds... AU, HGGL and BM
1. Default Chapter

The Pyrrhic Days

The following presentation is a fusion fic; Justice League and Battle Royale. I've been considering the idea for a while and I'm finally writing it. Although the characters are the superheroes we are familiar with, they are ordinary people in this fic with only the barest nods to their other incarnations. Most of the ones I know will feature in here, and the ones I don't know will be replaced by original characters. Everyone, see the film Battle Royale if you don't know what's going on here, ok?

P.S: This is set in contemporary America with high school students, but I'm Irish so I may get things wrong. Bear with me!

PPS: I don't know any of The Joker's aliases so I'm using an anagram.

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The atmosphere on the bus was quiet, to begin with. After all, at seven in the morning, who has the energy to make much noise? Most of the students settled into their seats and tried to catch forty winks as soon as they could. Kenny Cooper (Boy #7) even had a flask of hot coffee to keep him going. But Kenny was a Grade-A nerd and nobody would congratulate him on his uncanny foresight. The bus left the school driveway at approximately 7:15, with all thirty students from Class C2 present and accounted for.

The sun climbed higher into the sky and the bus' occupants became steadily more animated. Girls chattered back and forth, boys joked and laughed and discussed game plans, couples made out in their seats and respective loners went about their usual business.

Near the front of the bus, Diana Chamberlain (Girl #2) kneeled on her seat, talking to the girls behind her. If there was such thing as royalty in Lavender Peaks, Maine, Diana would have been the undisputed princess. Her mother, Rosemarie Setterton, was the heiress to the Setterton fortune and her father, Eugene Chamberlain, was one of the wealthiest tycoons in the country. Despite all this, no-one could call Diana a snob. She talked to everyone, no matter how far down the social ladder they were. She was an attractive girl, stunning even, with long tousled ebony hair and full, pouting lips that were constantly smiling. Her only flaw, if it could be called that, was that she was very tall. She was almost six feet tall in fact, and very conscious of it. As she chatted away to Sarah Parker (Girl #7) and Kelly Beauregard (Girl #12) she pulled down the hem of her short school skirt almost abstractly. She was currently dating one of the few boys in her class that towered over her.

That boy was Clark Kent (Boy #5). Diana gave him a quick glance and he smiled back indulgently. They made an attractive couple. Clark had dark hair and bright blue eyes, just like her, and wide shoulders. His arms were full of thick muscle, but he still managed to stay lean around the waist. He had played football for a long time, but at the start of the school year he'd given it up, to the dismay of most of the school. When asked about it, he just shrugged and said the game didn't seem as important to him any more. Now that he was no longer a jock, he was finding he didn't have much in common with his girlfriend any more. He was fond of her, to be sure, but their relationship had never progressed beyond kissing and some heavy petting. He was glad of it now. A book of nineteenth century poetry lay open on his lap.

Sitting beside Clark was his new best friend, a quiet young man named J'onn Jonze (Boy #13). He was Croatian, something that was reflected in his genetic makeup. His skin had a slight olive tint to it, and his eyes were dark and intense, sometimes appearing red in certain lights. His intensity was what stopped people from talking to him. Girls were intimidated and guys thought that he was a snob, but his poor grasp of the English language was the real problem. Clark was the first friend he'd made since arriving in America two years before. While Clark read his poetry book, J'onn was reading an abridged version of Dostoyevsky's The Idiots. He wanted to learn English the hard way.

Sharp, grating giggles from behind them failed to distract the two boys from their reading. They were used to it, and so was the rest of the class. It was only Tate Jones (Boy #10) as his girlfriend Harley Quinn (Girl #8) making out. Now there was a pair made for each other. Tate was a skinny, pimpled delinquent with a terrible sense of humour and a low attention span. Harley was an awkward, overweight wannabe who thought that pouring your energies into hair products and concealing makeup was more helpful than actually losing the excess weight. Tate was her first boyfriend and the two couldn't keep their hands off of each other. It was enough to turn a grown man's stomach.

Two seats behind them, Wally West (Boy #3) was telling a long, rambling joke about a nun and a farmer to some of his friends from the track team. Wally was the one guy in the class that everyone liked. Some would have said he was the male equivalent of Diana, if he'd had the looks to match. He wasn't bad-looking, with sharp angular features set in a childishly round face and a thick mane of chestnut coloured hair that he liked to keep long. He was handsome, but not gorgeous. He didn't really care, though. As far as Wally was concerned, he had no time for girls. His schedule with the track team was fairly intense, had been ever since he took the first place trophy against Denver PH. With his long gangly frame, he made an unusual athlete but it did serve to make him friends with people who wouldn't have looked at him twice before. He finished his joke and the group laughed loudly.

One boy didn't laugh, though. John Stewart (Boy #9) was sitting with the rest of his friends, a mix of football, basketball and track athletes. He was a big guy, heavily muscled and tall. He also had the distinction of being one of the school's few African American students, something which had once prevented him from making friends. But he had fitted in thanks to his superb linebacker skills and so he didn't have to sit by himself. His seating partner Peter Baker (Boy #8) was just about skinny enough to let them both sit comfortably. Peter was laughing at Wally's joke so hard he was gasping for breath. John wasn't laughing. He was distracted by one of the female students.

Shayera Hol (Girl #4) sat across from him, all alone, staring out the window. Her long auburn hair faced him, but John could see by her reflection in the window that she was bored, almost sulky. She was a pretty girl, to be sure, but she rarely smiled. She was a bit of a loner, because she had an intensity that drove other people away. Guys found her intimidating, even though she was fairly high up on the school's informal list of attractive girls. She was the school's tennis champion and she did track as well, although she wasn't as fast as Wally (then again, who was?) The fact that she was such a good athlete was a bit surprising, because Shayera was as small as Diana was tall. She just tipped five feet standing up straight and weighed less than ninety pounds. Even her uniform was a modified middle school version, specially commissioned when she discovered that the high school uniform was too big. It was the uniform that drew John's gaze to her, mainly the skirt. Shayera didn't seem to realise just how high it had hiked up around her legs. If some opportunistic guy strained forward a touch, he'd see right up her skirt. Then John winced. Someone had already realised this.

Solomon Grundy (Boy #11) was holding a small mirror, probably stolen from the bag of the girl in front of him, and was using it to look up Shayera's skirt. He was a quarterback, weighing in at almost three hundred pounds and at six foot nine in height, but he looked unhealthy. His skin was almost always pale and covered with a thin sheen of sweat. There was a rumour going about that Solomon was doing steroids, and certainly his personality would have proved that. He was easily irritated and very foul-tempered. Only three weeks before the bus journey, he was due to be suspended for attacking one of the rival football team's star players. The other boy had ended up with a punctured lung and a shattered pelvis, effectively ending his promising football career. Somehow, Solomon had avoided the suspension and was permitted to go on the school trip.

The mirror that Solomon held belonged to Ivy O Hara (Girl #1) who was sitting across from him, just in front of Shayera. Her bag was lying in the aisle and the mirror had tumbled out when the other students were boarding. Ivy didn't notice, though. She had several mirrors in her bag, and she was inspecting her face for spots as the bus trundled on. Ivy was one of the class' many pretty girls, and she was by far the vainest. It was as if she was making up for lost time. In her younger days her bright red hair and overly wide eyes had made her a popular target for bullies. But just before she'd entered high school, her growth spurt had kicked in, her carrot-orange hair had darkened to a silky auburn and she'd learned to coordinate her clothes to match her pale green eyes. These days she never went anywhere without a hefty supply of beauty products. Finding no spots, she set about curling her eyelashes with a set of tongs.

Near the back of the bus sat Ivy's sometime best friend and occasional worst enemy, Selina Kyle (Girl #10). She was another of the class' many pretty girls, but there was an important difference between her and the other girls. She was the school slut. Even her uniform bore testament to this; her skirt ended at least five inches above her knees, her shirt was barely buttoned up across the chest and instead of the regulation flat black pumps, she wore knee-high boots with spike heels. She was reading some fashion magazine or other to pass the time, swinging her long legs idly back and forth. If the trip had been scheduled just a week before, Selina would have been making out with her current paramour, Adam Jameson (Boy #6). But she had finished with him, though not before spreading a vicious rumour about his prowess between the sheets. Selina offered herself on a plate to any man that would take her, but it came with a risk. Sleeping with her meant that everyone in the school would probably know any and all the intimate details. She yawned frequently, like a bored cat, and twiddled strands of coal-black hair around her fingers.

Two seats down from Selina sat Bruce Wayne (Boy #15). He was a new student and considerably older than the others. No-one knew for sure what his circumstances were, and he certainly wasn't telling anyone about himself. The popular rumour going around was that he'd been roughed up by a gang at his last school and had only just emerged from a coma. Bruce's face was marred right down the middle by a long, jagged scar, and one of the boys who had seen him changing for gym said that there were scars all over his body. Not just jagged ones, but small rounds ones, like cigarette burns or bullet wounds. He was tall but lean like a panther, with dark hair and eyes. Even the roughest guys in school were intimidated by Bruce.

That was, except for Lex Luthor (Boy #4). Lex wasn't intimidated by anyone. He was the leader of the class C2's delinquent group, which consisted of Seth Merchant (Boy #1), Rico Jiminez (Boy #12) and, at least up until he got a girlfriend, Tate Jones. One might have wondered why Lex, the distinguished son of one of the town's most respected businessmen, hung around with no-hopers like Seth and Rico. Those two kept their hair long and greasy and defaced their uniforms on purpose by burning holes in the shirt and blazer with cigarettes and ripping off buttons. Lex's hair had been shaved off right down to the bone for reasons known only to him, and his uniform was always neat and tidy. Regardless, he was their leader and he got involved in all of their joyriding expeditions, stealing and gang warfare. Despite all of this, he was a straight-A student. No-one crossed Lex Luthor and got away with it, for he was as good in a fight as he was academically.

It was an all-day trip, and the students ate out of lunchboxes and tried to sleep. In fact, as the sun went down, no-one had any trouble sleeping. One by one, they all dropped off. They were so tired that they thought the strange smell in the bus was a figment of their collective imaginations.

Wally woke up after banging his head off of the window and took a quick look around. Everyone was asleep, but something wasn't right. Diana at the front was slumped over and lay across the two seats with her head hanging off the edge. Her long black hair formed a pool in the aisle. Solomon Grundy was hanging over the safety bar at the side of his seat. Shayera had actually fallen out of her seat and was lying unconscious on the ground. Wally would have gone back to help her, but his head felt as though someone had scooped out his brains and replaced it with cotton wool. He was already falling asleep again. But just before his eyes closed, he saw something strange.

Bruce Wayne was banging on the window so hard that the vibrations could be felt all the way around the bus. He was trying to shout as well, but it seemed he couldn't get the words out. Wally wondered what all the fuss was about. Maybe poor old Brucie was travel sick… Wally fell asleep again and Bruce wasn't far behind. None of the students saw the bus go through the grid-iron gate tipped with barbed wire.

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Clark Kent woke up to the sound of his fellow students groaning. There was a strange, metallic taste in his mouth and his head hurt when he sat up. He rubbed his eyes sleepily and took a good look around.

The room they were in was like a classroom, but the windows were boarded up. There were cheap desks and plastic chairs lined up in front of a large blackboard, and in those chairs were his classmates. Clark spotted Diana in the middle of the room where she too was just waking up. He checked her to see that she wasn't injured and was about to turn away when he spotted a flash of silver at her throat. Diana didn't wear necklaces, he knew that. He'd bought her one once and she'd never worn it. Clark was just considering this when he felt something cool against his own throat. He raised his hand and felt a round metallic object circling his neck. He tugged at it but it wouldn't come loose. He turned to the student beside him, Lucinda Greer (Girl #6), and her throat held the same metal object. It looked like a collar for a dog or a cat, but with a small black digital panel in the middle. All the students were awake now and starting to talk to each other.

Suddenly, the door at the back of the room whooshed open and a small man, flanked by two armed guards, strolled to the front. The students fell silent, all except for Jen Sellers (Girl #11) who was sobbing noisily. She didn't take surprises well. The small man, who was sixty if he was a day, stood behind the large desk at the front of the room. He cleared his throat and began to speak.

"Class C2," he said cheerfully. "Welcome to The Program!"

Someone in the back screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

The Pyrrhic Days

Chapter Two

Okay, so the last Chapter was lacking in action. I promise that after this one it'll be mostly action. But first, we explain…

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In the early years of the new millennium, things in the United Sates of America went from bad to worse. The rest of the world turned against it over the Middle East issues. The economy went sour, with over three million people unemployed. Worst of all, the country experienced a sudden population boom. Due to the fact that an average of sixteen people were living in an average of two rooms apiece, pandemics soared. Outbreaks of diseases that were thought to be long extinct such as cholera, dengue fever, Ebola and Lassa fever were discovered in the most heavily populated areas of the country. Many people were enlisted into the army and into the police force then sent off on unnecessary peacekeeping missions in order to do away with part of the problem, but soon that failed too. There were just not enough nations causing trouble for them to solve their own problems. There was only one solution left.

America turned against its youth.

With the Christian Right firmly in control, abortion and child quotas were out, but competitions were still allowed. A former military commander turned senator came up with a plan to have a group of young people fight each other to the death to see which ones were most worthy of living. It was presented in a very plausible manner, the idea that the person best equipped naturally under extreme circumstances would be a valuable citizen. It sounded so good that the politicians momentarily forgot that they were talking about mass murder of American citizens. The deciding factor in the plan was the endorsement by a prominent television mogul, who donated seven billion dollars to the government to secure the rights to film the struggle. It was called _The Program_, and it aired every March for three days.

A class of high school students between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, with the odd repeat student or prodigy, were brought to a small uninhabited island on the outskirts of California. Each student was given a rucksack with food, water and a randomly selected weapon. If one was lucky, they would get a gun. If not, they would get a small knife or a booby prize. The game lasted three days and at the end only one person was permitted to survive, having killed all the others. Just to make sure, the students were fitted with electronic collars. The collars monitored heartbeat and injury statistics, but they were also loaded with a small explosive. If there was more than one student left at the end, the collars would explode.

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When they heard the word program, the classroom descended into chaos. Girls screamed and cried and grabbed at each other. Boys yelled and battered at the doors in a futile attempt to escape. Rico Jimenez actually vomited across his table. Jen Sellers stood in the middle of the room, screeching with the full force of her lungs.

Then one of the guards opened fire at the ceiling. The room fell silent again.

"Now, all of you take your seats," the little man said with a spry wag if one chubby finger, "or I'll have to hand out demerits!"

They all sat down, even Rico at his vomit-stained desk. Some of the girls were still sobbing.

"Now," piped up the little man, "given your reaction just now, I'd say you're all familiar with _The Program._ Good! That means we can cut to the chase."

As the man turned to write on the blackboard, John Stewart took a quick look behind him. He was sitting near the front, to the left, and Shayera Hol was closer to the back. If she was scared, and he knew she must be, she wasn't showing it. But as he looked closer he could see her shoulders shaking.

"My name," the man bellowed, "is Captain Anderton! I've been the Program's administrator for the past seven years, and I'm delighted to see such a grand bunch of young people here today!"

Just then, the captain scowled and yelled in Cassie Proctor's (Girl #14) general direction. She'd been whispering to Kelly Beauregard beside her. When the captain yelled, she stopped immediately.

"No talking in class, young lady," he admonished in gentler tones. "Now in a few moments you'll all be given your packs and sent out to the island. But just a few things we need to go over first."

A rough map had been drawn on the blackboard with a grid running through it. The captain turned to it.

"This is what the island looks like," he said clearly but not loudly. "There will be a more detailed map in your packs, but this will suffice for now. The island is divided into regions like so. The regions are numbered, and certain regions will become danger zones as the game goes on. You'll be informed of the new danger zones every hour via the intercom. Deaths will be reported the same way."

Clark could see Diana from where he was, and he could see she was upset. Tears were streaming down her face and she was making no effort to wipe them away. Clark felt useless to her.

"The danger of these danger zones," Captain Anderton continued, oblivious to the internal struggles of his students, "relates to those collars you are all wearing."

Most of the student's hands rose to touch the collars.

"The collars, as you know, are fitted with small explosive devices that we can detonate from this building. If you happen to wander into a danger zone, they detonate automatically. They also detonate if you try to break them off."

The student's hands left their collars abruptly.

"If there is no winner by the end of the three days, all the collars explode. I might add that in the history of the illustrious game that that's never happened, but who knows?" He gave a casual shrug. Then he scowled.

"No TALKING!" he screamed suddenly, and threw something at Cassie Proctor. She'd been talking again.

Cassie looked stunned for a moment, and wondered why her head felt cold, and why Kelly's eyes looked so deranged. Her head felt heavy… that was the last thing Cassie felt as her body fell to one side, crashing against Diana Chamberlain's on the way down. The object that the captain had thrown at her was a machete. It was firmly imbedded in her skull, and had killed her within a matter of seconds. Diana screamed shrilly, and Kelly howled. Another machine gun blast calmed them both down.

_(Girl #14; Dead. 29 to go.)_

"Now there is a girl who doesn't have what it takes," said the captain, gesturing at the dead girl. "Survival of the fittest, boys and girls! You don't have to be the strongest, the smartest or the most adaptable to win this game. Sometimes, it all comes down to pure luck."

The Captain pointed his fat finger at Solomon Grundy.

"Now who's to say that this big boy, despite his obvious natural advantage, won't lose against that young lady over there?" he said, pointing at Samantha Polley (Girl #5), a timid little brunette with thick, coke-bottle glasses.

"The important thing is that you all use what you have to get ahead. That young miss," he said, pointing at Cassie's dead body, "didn't have what it takes. Not even enough willpower to stay quiet for a few minutes."

The Captain finished talking and walked over to the door. He swung it open to reveal a line of soldiers with machine guns lining the corridor.

"I should mention that this building here is a permanent danger zone, so don't get any ideas about coming back and shooting us out. Your collars will be activated ten minutes after you leave. Now, if that's all, I'll be picking names at random."

Panic began to well up again in the students, but no-one dared make a sound. Cassie's body was slowly draining of blood. The captain opened a large metal locker near the door. Inside were thirty olive-green rucksacks. He walked up to his desk and pulled a small paper slip from a box sitting there.

"And our first student to go is… Boy #8, Peter Baker."

Peter stood up, ashen faced, on hearing his name. But before he could walk to the door, he was grabbed by his girlfriend, Vicki Henderson. She clung to him, gibbering madly and begging him not to go. A soldier had to separate them. But before he left her, Peter whispered something in her ear. The class was made to wait for ten minutes after the student was gone.

Bruce Wayne was the fifth student to leave. He swung his rucksack easily onto his back and marched out the door.

J'onn Jonze was the seventh person to leave. He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he was handed his bag, and he walked out of the classroom in a daze.

Ivy O Hara was the eighth person to leave. She held the strap of her rucksack gingerly and was fussing with her hair as she left.

Wally West was the tenth person to leave. He grabbed his bag out of the soldier's hands and broke into a sprint as he left.

Harley Quinn was the thirteenth person to leave. She was sobbing loudly and shuffling as she left.

Shayera Hol was the fourteenth person to leave. She struggled with her heavy rucksack but managed to get it out the door.

Selina Kyle was the nineteenth person to leave. She picked up her rucksack with ease and waved at her classmates, swinging her hips jauntily as she left.

By the time Clark Kent's name was called, only seven students remained in the classroom. As he went to collect his bag, he leaned over Diana's desk. She was still crying quietly to herself.

"I'll wait for you outside," he whispered.

Diana smiled gratefully at him, and for a moment he felt disgust at her helplessness. He brushed it aside as he left the room. The corridor was dark and saturated with a rusted smell, but the smell cleared as the exit came into view. The air was now balmy and pleasantly warm. Outside, all was dark, except for a sliver of light provided by a cloud-covered moon. There was a concrete road on the outskirts of a wooded area, and Clark thought it best to wait for Diana in the woods. That was where the danger zone ended. He was just about to enter the woods when he spotted an object on the ground. Had someone dropped their rucksack? He approached the object cautiously, curiously. But then the moon shone through the clouds and revealed the object to Clark.

It was Marie Steiner (Girl # 9).

She was a cute blonde girl who always wore her hair in pigtails and who cried if anyone was arguing with her. There wasn't an aggressive bone in her body. And there she was, lying in a heap with the tip of an arrow piercing one of her pretty pigtails. Her face was frozen in an expression of surprise.

"Marie…" Clark whispered, touching her shoulder gently. The girl's body rocked and Clark saw the pool of blood that her head was submerged in. he would have touched her again, but for the arrow that came whizzing by his own cheek, the tip leaving a long scratch in the previously smooth skin.

The game had begun.

_(Girl #9: Dead. 28 to go.)_


	3. Chapter 3

**The Pyrrhic Days**

**Chapter Three**

I suppose I'd better apologise for the rating on this story. I accidentally put it on Pg13 on the JLA website when it should have had an R rating. I promise to remedy this immediately because the action will be more intense from now on.

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Clark raised his hand to his cheek as another arrow whizzed past, narrowly clipping his ear. But he heard the third arrow being released and he turned, grabbing Marie's backpack and swinging it into the air. He used it as a shield against the flurry of arrows that came at him. Who was firing? Clark heard a series of deep, ragged breaths and lowered his backpack armour. He gaped.

There, sitting in one of the trees and only barely hanging on, was Douglas Piper (Boy #2). Known as Dougie to his parents, Duggers to his few friends and Fat Ass to most of the students of Lavender Peaks High. Douglas weighed approximately three hundred and fifty pounds, and although the school had seen obesity before Doug happened to be the worst case. The cause of his weight problem was a combination of overindulgent parents, too much pocket money and the last vestiges of a childhood illness. Douglas steadfastly refused to diet, preaching that people should accept him the way he was. Naturally, the students didn't take this edict to heart and the boy had for years had to put up with teasing, name-calling and the occasional act of violence with stoic acceptance. Now things were radically different.

Sweat ran down Douglas' wide face in thin rivers and he panted heavily. He was struggling to reload the crossbow shoved under his heavy arm, and all the time his beady eyes darted back and forth. Apparently he had copped on to a few home truths. All the comfort eating, the vows to go on a diet, all the money he'd been putting aside for stomach reduction surgery to show those cruel bastards a thing or two, meant nothing now. He was trapped in a life or death situation and he was at a severe disadvantage. Not only did his weight make him a slow opponent, it made him an easy target. For once he couldn't just bite his lip and bear the bullies' jibes with the knowledge that they would eventually leave him alone. Now, the bullies were out to kill him.

So, Dougie had climbed a tree (with considerable effort) and drew his weapon. He wanted to shoot them all as they came out, that way they wouldn't get the chance to turn on him. That's how it starts, you see. They need a favour, they'll be nice to you, but the minute you give them what they want they turn on you. These thoughts ran feverishly through his brain as he loaded his bow. When the next few people came out, he'd shot at them. He'd shot at Rico Jimenez, and managed to catch him in the leg. Good. Rico was one of the worst bullies. He'd shot at Shayera Hol, but missed as she saw him first and took off like a rocket. Bad. She wasn't a nice girl, even if she'd never bullied him. While he was trying to find her in the forest, Selina Kyle got away. Very bad. Selina was a nasty girl. She'd called him Blubber Butt once. Then Marie Steiner came out, and he'd shot her. Killed her.

That confused him a bit. Was it good or bad that he'd killed pretty little Marie? She was a nice girl, but nice girls became nasty in a game like this. She had asked him for a pen once, and giggled when he blushed. When he shot her, she didn't scream or cry out, she just gurgled and fell over. He had just begun to panic about killing her when Clark Kent walked out.

Bad. Very bad. Worst.

Clark represented for Douglas everything he'd wanted to be. Tall, strong, athletic, smart, nice girlfriend, nice buddies, parents who weren't divorced, good grades, and above all things Clark had never carried more than an extra pound in his life. Douglas hated him.

"Douglas," Clark called up in that deep, rich voice of his, "what are you doing?"

"I'm _winning!_" screeched Douglas and let loose another flurry of arrows. He was already half mad.

Clark was conflicted. Should he try to reason with Douglas, keep dodging the arrows and try to fight back, or just make a run for it? In the end, the decision was made for him. By sheer luck, the name called out after Clark Kent was Diana Chamberlain. She appeared in the door and narrowly missed being hit by an arrow.

"Clark...wha…?" she gasped. Clark jumped forward grabbed her hand and pulled them both into the forest. Douglas followed them with a flurry of arrows, until Clark grabbed Marie's bag again and flung it at the other boy, knocking him out of the tree.

Clark dragged Diana through bushel and bramble, past the endless trees, unaware of the thorns that scraped her bare legs and the large branch that skimmed the top of his skull. He didn't stop running until they were in a small clearing, when Diana tripped over an exposed root. Finally he stood still, waiting for her to get back up. His eyes were nervous and he rocked on the soles of his feet. Diana stared at him with wide eyes. It the moonlight she reminded him of a scared rabbit.

"Clark…" she began.

"Yeah?" His breathing slowed at the sound of her voice. He was starting to calm down.

"What happened back there?"

"It was Douglas. He's playing."

"Oh." It was all she could think of to say, until something else occurred to her. "I saw something on the ground. Was it…"

"Marie Steiner. He got her."

"Oh," she said again, and pressed her chin close to her chest. It took Clark a moment to realise that she was crying. He felt a twinge of irritation at her that terrified him a moment later.

Meanwhile, Douglas had blacked out for a few seconds after the fall. His weight was the reason he wasn't badly hurt, but it was cold comfort now. He couldn't find his crossbow.

Thousands of miles away, Dougie's mother was straining to get down on her knees to pray for her son's life, but before she could utter one word he had taken his last breath. An arrow was fired into his skull at point-blank range and he slumped to the ground near Marie, with a surprised look on his face.

Kenny Cooper, the one person in the school who had been on the receiving end of more bullying than Douglas, lowered the crossbow and gave the body a kick before walking away.

"Stupid fat ass," he muttered under his breath.

_(Boy #2 Douglas Piper; Dead. 27 to go.)_

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John Stewart wasn't as nervous as he should have been. That was how he felt anyway. Then again, he never quite reacted in a 'normal' way to anything. He was notorious for such things. When he'd learned that his father had left the family, he had laughed. When he got straight A's for the first time, he punched the wall and fractured two fingers. When he met Shayera Hol, he was intrigued.

_It was five o clock on a Sunday morning, the sun was just starting to warm the sky but it was still deathly cold. Most people were in bed, or just coming home from some mad part. But John Stewart had a job to do, a job that required an early start. He delivered the morning papers in Lavender Peaks. It was a crap job that paid abysmal wages, but there was no money to spare in a family of seven for someone's new basketball trainers. Needs must where wants exist or something like that. The early mornings were a pain, but riding his bike kept him fit and he had time to be alone with his thoughts._

_Well, for a while anyway. He was about halfway through his bag of papers when another figure appeared on the deserted street._

_He recognized her. She was in his class. What was her name, Sheryl, Shirley? No, it was Polish or something. Shayera! He remembered thin king it was a pretty name. She made an odd picture on the empty street, her tiny frame utterly smothered by a pale blue tracksuit. She was jogging and apparently had been at it for a while, judging by the force of her breathing. He watched her as she stopped by a garden and drenched her head and neck with the hose. Then she simply carried on jogging. She gave him the slightest of nods as she passed him._

_He followed along behind her as he was doing his paper round, but found that his curiosity towards her had not waned when the papers were gone. It was seven in the morning, usually the time he would have turned around to go home and back to bed for a few hours. But he found himself following her, just to see how far she was planning on jogging. She was already miles out of her way. He was a little concerned for her safety too, he had to admit. After all, she was such a small girl and all alone._

_He followed her out of the residential area and onto the expressway. She knew he was there, but she ignored him. He felt an odd admiration for her sense of focus whereas most people would have dismissed her as a frosty bitch and left her alone. He couldn't quite understand why she was jogging; she was a tennis champion, she didn't do track. Just days before she had beaten the Maine State School's reigning champion, a girl named Ellen Samuels who stood about six feet tall and had muscles like a quarterback. After winning a big game, John's usual actions for the weeks afterwards involved lots of fattening food and hours in bed. So why was this girl, who had every right to spend an entire year in bed after her victory, jogging at five in the morning?_

_They had made it about halfway down the expressway when she finally stopped. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily as he put the brakes on his bike. When she got her breath back, she turned to him with a small smile._

_"So, do you want to let me know why you're following me?"_

_Her voice was high pitched and smooth, with a slight hint of a foreign accent. For some reason, the sound made him smile back. _

_"Just curious. How far are you planning on going?" he said._

_"This far. Then I take a break and jog back."_

_His eyebrows rose._

_"It's miles back!"_

_She nodded. "I know," she answered with a slight shrug of her thin shoulders._

_He was reluctant to let her go back to jogging without talking to her some more. Luckily, he spotted a roadside diner a few minutes down the road._

_"Hop on," he told her, gesturing towards the back of his bike. "I'm taking you to the diner."_

_She hesitated. "I'm covered with sweat, you know," she told him by way of explanation._

_"So what? A little sweat never hurt anyone," he retorted. She laughed, something he'd never seen her do before even when he saw her at school. _

_"Just don't blame me when you're stinking to high heaven all the way home, okay?"_

_She hopped on and they were seated in the diner in a matter of minutes. John asked Shayera the question that had been bothering him; just why was she working out days after her tennis victory?_

_"Did you see the match?" she asked. He shook his head; he'd been on the football pitch at the time._

_"Ellen Samuels," she continued. "Big girl. Much bigger than me, obviously, and she's been playing longer. Do you know why I beat her?" Again, he shook his head._

_"Luck. It was sheer luck." She downed her cold drink in two swift gulps. "I tired her out because I'm lighter on my feet than her. Too bad for her, but she could have beaten me. All she needed was a little more endurance."_

_"So, why are you jogging?" he asked, wondering if she was getting off topic._

_"Trying to build up my own endurance for next time. I like to be well ahead of the game. Ellen's across town, probably running a bit herself. But I'm going further and working harder she ever will. I'll keep on beating her and anyone else who comes along."_

John smiled at the memory. She'd insisted on jogging all the way back, and he'd insisted on cycling all the way back with her. Since then, he hadn't spoken to her but he thought about her every now and then. His last girlfriend had been almost the exact opposite of Shayera. Katma Tui, known as Kat to her boyfriendand Kitty to her friends, was tall and thin with dark skin and closely cropped hair. The one thing the two girls had in common was that peculiar sense of determination. He would have asked Shayera out, if he'd had the chance. Now that they were both stuck on this island in deadly circumstances, he had decided that he'd need to find her and let her know that he admired her, that he thought she was cute…

… that he loved her.

Through a clearing in the forest, he thought he could see someone on the edge of a cliff. No, it was two someones. Straining his eyes, he could see that it was Peter Baker and Vicki Henderson. He smiled. They were such a sweet couple. It was great that they found each other in the midst of all the confusion.

His smile froze. They were awfully close to the edge. And then it happened.

They jumped. Together.

John clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. The reality of his situation suddenly hit him, and he ran blindly into the trees.

Ten miles away from John Stewart, Shayera Hol was tiptoeing around the foliage, wondering what to do. She was only a few feet away from Solomon Grundy.

_(Boy #8 Peter Baker; Dead. Girl #13 Vicki Henderson; Dead. 25 to go.)_


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter Four_**

Okay, a few notes before I continue: First of all, the only knowledge I have of any of the DC characters comes directly from the cartoon. I don't read the comics, I don't know the history, I'm not even that fond of comics at all. But I am a fanfiction writer and I wanted to do a Battle Royale fusion. So any discrepancies in character behaviour, names, physical appearance etc. are all down to my blatant ignorance. The discrepancies may not matter after a while, certainly not after I start killing them all off. Enjoy!

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The confusion of the situation had been getting to Wally West, but it soon passed. Confusion, doubt and frustration were normal feelings for Wally. As a result, his coping skills were developed to an amazing level.

Wallace West was born in 1987 to Joseph and Emily West, the youngest of four children. He was deemed an unexpected miracle, given Joe and Emily's advanced years. Emily was forty-six when she had her last baby, and Joe was fifty two. All of their other children were practically grown up at that stage.

But Wally (named after the matinee idol Wallace Reid) learned from a very young age that miracles were one thing and outright lies were another. His mother never boasted about her ability to bear children so late in life, and his father treated him with something like absent minded fondness rather than fatherly regard. Wally had figured out by the time he was ten that the grey haired woman with the arthritic knees couldn't possibly be his mother, miracles of nature notwithstanding. And that old man with the smoker's cough who still owned a victrola and played records of Enrico Caruso wasn't his father.

Well, that just left one possibility. Clara West (named after the golden girl of the silent screen, Clara Bow) his older sister. She'd been fifteen when Wally was born. But wasn't it likely that dear sweet Clara got herself knocked up by some wide boy, cried and sobbed to her parents and left them to raise her baby while she made something of herself? When Wally said this to his father, he got a strapping that he felt resentful of for years. It wasn't that unlikely. Apparently Clara West had quite a reputation, even years after she left Maine to get married and have children. Any time she came to visit, and those occasions were few and far between, she treated Wally like the mischievous neighbour's child who had wandered into their house without permission.

So that was Wally's life. Two elderly 'parents' and a real mother who didn't care. But he chose not to dwell on it. Doing so would only make him miserable, he reasoned. Any time the negative feelings would start to creep up on him, he just dashed off to do something else. If he couldn't stop the bad thoughts rising up to engulf him, he'd go for a run. He was the star of the track team of course, but that happened to be an accidental result of his determination to run from his problems and keep a positive attitude.

But now he was lost in the middle of some mystery jungle, with three days to go until some wacko blew his head off with a dog collar bomb. Kind of put things in perspective. Although, he mused angrily, had his slutty sister decided to put him up for adoption instead of leaving him with her old-ass parents, he wouldn't be in this mess. No matter what, all the bad things came back to his less-than-pleasant start in life.

Wally spent most of the night jogging lightly, trying to find a safe spot to camp for the night. He didn't think anyone would really start attacking each other, but he didn't want to find out he was wrong, either. Dropping his bag, he rummaged around in the supplied rucksack for his supplied weapon. He pulled out two water bottles, a hard loaf of bread in a plastic baggy, his map, a compass…

…found it!

He pulled out a small pistol, already loaded with six bullets. Further digging produced three small boxes of bullets. He sighed with relief. The gun would help keep attackers away. More importantly, it would keep the bad thoughts away.

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About three kilometres away from Wally, Belinda Hugo (Girl #3) was sitting in an abandoned house, under an old plywood table, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. In the distance, a muffled noise could be heard, as though someone was working on an old typewriter. Clack, clack, clack…

She was scared stupid. Cassie Proctor's face had burned a mental picture into her brain and now it flashed before her like a lighthouse beacon. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

If only some nice girl could come in here, she kept thinking. If only some nice girl could find me, and we could hide together, and keep each other safe, and I'd be okay, okay. Belinda was a notorious coward, constantly hiding behind her friends when she needed help then bitching about them behind their backs. That was her calling, sort of. She was attractive, with straight brown hair and dark blue eyes, but not stunning. Certainly not in a class with girls like Selina Kyle and Diana Chamberlain. Her grades were average, her athletic status non-existent, her social life unremarkable. Her claim to fame was knowing everyone's gossip.

Fat lot of good it would do her on the island. In fact, it made things worse. What if Shayera Hol still felt angry with her for spreading that rumour about her and Solomon Grundy and was hunting her down? What if Samantha Polley was using that gossip Belinda spread about her being born with a penis as an excuse to kill her? Belinda began to cry.

Just then, there was a noise, a shuffling from outside. Someone was inside the house. There was a muffled clack, someone's shoes. Girl's shoes, Belinda thought, both relieved and terrified.

The door opened, and a figure entered the room. As it drew close to the table, Belinda held her breath. She could only see the figure's legs. And very nice legs they were too. The girl was tall, so that immediately ruled out Shayera Hol, Harley Quinn, Samantha Polley, Marie Steiner and Jen Sellers. She wasn't too thin, which ruled out Diana Chamberlain and Vicki Henderson. Belinda hoped it was Barbara Myers (Girl #15) one of the few girls in the class that she'd never spread any rumours about.

And then Belinda saw the spike heel boots. Selina Kyle.

She bit back a terrified scream. Of all the people to be discovered by, Selina Kyle was the worst. She would have preferred anyone, even a boy, even a delinquent boy! For not only was Selina a slut, she was vicious. A friend had told Belinda that when Selina had an affair with a married local politician, she had attacked the man's wife with a switchblade, blinding her and causing huge, disfiguring scars. Selina was ruthless.

She was right in front of Belinda.

Belinda felt around for her weapon, but it was pathetic. It was a knife, a thick blade with a serrated edge. A bog-standard kitchen knife. How could she defend herself with a kitchen knife? Gripping her knife, she prayed that Selina wouldn't find her. But it was too late. Selina peered under the table, and found her. But then she did something unexpected.

She sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face.

"Belinda! Thank God it's you!" she cried, mascara making two long streaks of black coated her smooth cheeks. Belinda couldn't believe it. Selina Kyle, crying like a little kid?

"I've been so scared," Selina sobbed. Belinda felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her, which was totally irrational given their history. But Belinda found herself in tears too, and she threw her arms around Selina, so glad to have someone in the midst of all the confusion.

"I'm sorry," Belinda sobbed onto the dark haired girl's shoulder. "I've been so horrible to you! I'm so scared…"

"It's okay now," said Selina, patting the brunette's head in an out-of-character gesture that struck Belinda as unbelievable for a moment, but then she sank into the girl's arms.

She's not such a bad person after all, she thought. Or at least, she began to think it. A sharp pain suddenly attacked her throat, cutting off any senses except that of pain. After the sharpness their was a burning and a feeling of gushing fluid.

Selina pushed Belinda away as the blood began to gush out of her neck. The hot liquid hit the walls, the table and spurted all over the floor, but it didn't hit Selina. She had planned the angle of her attack so that she wouldn't end up with blood all over her uniform. Belinda gurgled for a moment or two, and raised her hand to her neck, coating it in hot, sticky wetness. Then she collapsed and died, her eyes opened, her eyelashes coated with red droplets.

_(Girl #3 Belinda Hugo: Dead. 24 to go.)_

Once upon a time, Belinda Hugo told three casual acquaintances that Selina Kyle was a prostitute, that she was a nymphomaniac who slept with strangers but took money for it because she didn't want a regular job. Selina heard this, and she was furious and upset and scared and all the other things that you feel when someone makes you out to be something you're not and everyone believes her. But that's not why she killed Belinda. She killed her because Belinda was the first person she'd found.

Selina wiped her weapon, a long-bladed sickle, on Belinda's uniform and walked away.

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Seth Merchant _(Boy #1) _was running through the forest towards the East of the island, his breath coming in harsh gasps. He had to stop for a moment to catch his breath, his smoking habit catching up with him. His lungs burned and he coughed, bringing up thick phlegm in the back of his throat. But he kept running.

Before they left the classroom, Seth had received a note from Lex, telling him to make it to the East of the island. He was a coward by nature, and not ashamed to admit it, but knowing that Lex would support him gave him hope. They would team up, take on the military, escape the island, _live! _He smiled as he ran.

Lex was the greatest. He was strong, but not boastful. Smart, but not a smartass. He was great at everything and anything he put his mind to, but he didn't rub it in anyone's face. Why he hung out with a pair of no-hopers (Seth was honest enough o call himself a no-hoper) like himself and Rico, the illiterate son of Mexican immigrants, was a mystery.

The East peak of the island was barely lit up by a cloud-covered moon, but Seth could make out the shape of Lex, his leader, sitting on top of the large boulder that sat there. Lex held an object in his hand, a vaguely rectangular shape, and he was staring at the night sky.

"Boss!" Seth called to him, his chest rising as he struggled to suck in air.

Lex turned, and suddenly Seth was filled with terror. The look in Lex's eyes… it was indescribable. Seth didn't have time to describe it, even mentally. Lex raised the object, and it was an AK-47.

A thick rattling noise filled the air, and Seth felt his body shake with the force of the bullets piercing his skin. But he felt no pain. It was over quickly. His body crashed to the ground, his face turning towards the moon. Had he still been alive, he would have seen Rico's similarly punctured body lying behind the rock.

Lex was the best. Always had been, always would be. How could he run the family business when his father was gone unless he was the best? There could only be one winner in the Game, and Lex would be that winner.

He got down off of the rock, and went on the prowl.

_(Boy #1 Seth Merchant: Dead. Boy #12 Rico Jimenez: Dead. 22 to go.) _


	5. Chapter 5

**_The Phyrric Days_**

****

**_Chapter Five_**

Alright, this is a stern warning. Things are going to get very intense now. If you are squeamish, or sensitive to harsh violence or just don't like reading about it, stop reading right now. The mercy kills are over, from now on we'll be talking about sociopaths, stalkers, mental problems, sexual situations, extreme damage to the human body and even more damage to the human mind. Look away, for Pete's sake!

And I might mention that no matter how much you or I love these characters, they're all going to be roughed up. Some more than others.

Well, I tried…

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Hearing the rattling and taking the source to be much closer than it actually was, Harley Quinn ran from the abandoned shed where she had been hiding into the forest. She gasped as she ran, being unused to such frenzied activities.

She was scared, more scared than she'd ever been in her life. More scared than the time her brother broke her arm with the wrench when she was five, more scared than when that same brother was killed in the road outside her house two years later, more scared than when that friend of her father's crawled into her bed the night after a big party and tried to touch her, only for Daddy to take him outside and beat him bloody. More scared than the first time she slept with Tate.

She sank to her knees in the wet grass and began to sob. She wanted Tate, more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life.

Harley Quinn was what most people would have referred to as a 'fine strapping girl'. Her genes were half-Irish, quarter Italian. If that wasn't a recipe for wide hips and a big bottom, what was? She wasn't fat, but she did have a tendency to carry around an extra pound or two. She was a healthy, hearty size twelve.

But in the tyrannical society of high school, size twelve equals fat. All the popular girls were sixes and fours. Diana Chamberlain was a six. Selina Kyle, the school sexpot, was a curvy eight. Ivy o Hara was a six, occasionally a five. Shayera Hol was a bloody three. What really hurt about that last example was that Shayera was almost the same height as Harley. One might expect someone like Diana to be thin; she was six feet tall after all. Harley could accept her size if only everyone else could accept it too.

In response to the teasing and catcalls that coloured her years in junior high, Harley became the archetype 'bad girl.' She wore heavy make-up, teased her hair to within an inch of her life, smoked both regular cigarettes and the occasional doobie and stayed out all night. She answered the teasing with bitter putdowns and jibes and eventually everyone left her alone. But she knew they called her blubber butt behind her back, and she also knew she'd never have a boyfriend.

She turned out to be wrong. Two months after they started the new term, Tate Jones asked her out. That was a real surprise, given Tate's relative bad boy appeal. He attracted girls by the dozen, despite the fact that he wasn't really the most attractive of guys. He was skinny, pasty and sharp-featured, but Harley thought he was beautiful. Girls liked him because he could handle anything anyone threw at him, and he had street cred. But Harley loved him for seeing her. He could have gone out with any number of girls who were beautiful in the classic way, but he chose plump, awkward Harley.

He kissed her, properly kissed her, on the first date. He'd taken her to the movies, cracked unsavoury jokes all the way through but managed to compliment her outfit. Then he'd bought her a vodka and orange at the bar (he knew the barmaid) and got her kind of drunk, but didn't take advantage of her when he could have done, so easily. She felt really, truly beautiful that night.

It took a further five dates and official confirmation of their status as a couple for her to sleep with him. She'd been terrified, though not of the usual things that a girl losing her virginity would worry about. She was worried about how he'd like her body, if he'd turn away in disgust from her. But he didn't. He just smiled as he undressed her, kissed her tenderly and made love to her as gently as possible. When it was all over, he told her that he liked her big breasts and wide hips. He had more of her to hold onto, he said, and laughed. She really, truly fell in love with him that night.

They slept together on a regular basis after that. Tate called it knockin' boots, but Harley always thought of it as making love. There were jokes of course. Such as if Tate was Cry-Baby, did that make Harley Hatchet Face? She didn't care. She loved Tate, and he loved her.

The chill from the wet grass barely registered with her as she cried bitterly to herself. If only Tate was with her…he'd protect her from danger. Like he protected her from the teasing and the bullying. She was his girl.

And then, as if by magic, he was there! Smiling at her, holding a switchblade in his bony hands, he was there! She could hardly believe it; she was paralysed, thinking that if she moved he would disappear…

"Harley!"

The spell broke when she heard him say her name. She leapt to her feet and threw herself at him, sobbing so harshly that her entire body shook. He pulled her face away from his shoulder and kissed her, slowly, which wasn't really appropriate given the circumstances but she didn't care because he was there with her. She could forgive him anything as long as he stayed with her.

"I saw you on the road, but by the time I got there you were gone. I thought I'd lost you," Tate said to her when she'd calmed down. She giggled a trifle nervously.

"I was really scared. It's not like I have experience in this kind of thing, y'know?" she said. She was starting to feel better now. With Tate by her side she could face anything, even death.

"Well, I'm here now. Though I don't know how much I can help you… not with this weapon anyway," he said, pointing towards his switchblade. He'd thrown it to one side when he saw her.

"Oh! I haven't checked my weapon yet," she gasped, then giggled bashfully. She rummaged through her bag until her hand brushed up against cold metal.

A handgun!

Harley knew guns, but she couldn't identify the one she was holding. It could have been a Walther, or a Magnum. Her father collected guns, but they were mostly hunting rifles. Tate whistled.

"Nice piece. Can I see it?"

She laughed and handed it over. "You can have it, I'll probably just shoot myself in the foot with it."

She heard a loud bang in the distance, and huddled closer to Tate. Seeing on-one, she sighed.

"I don't think I could do this alone," she whispered, looking off in the distance. "I'm so glad you're with me Tate. I feel really safe with…"

When she turned around, she saw the barrel of the gun she had just handed over. It was pointed straight at her temple.

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Clark marched through the forest as the first fingers of dawn stretched out over the horizon, a good few feet in front of Diana. She called out to him often, asking him to slow down, and every time she did he felt a flash of anger towards her.

Why was she so goddamn helpless? Since they'd escaped Douglas Piper's madness, all she'd done was complain. Slow down, Clark, I can't keep up, I'm tired, what was that noise, I cut my leg on the bramble, slow down… she just kept on an on!

"Clark, for God's sake would you slow down?" she called to him again.

He stopped. He was desperate for her to shut the hell up. She jogged to catch up, then leaned forward so that her forehead nearly touched her knees and her long dark hair slipped into the grass. She was panting heavily.

"Clark…" she gasped, her voice little more than a whisper but still too loud for comfort, "What are we gonna do?"

"I don't' know," he answered truthfully. Then he sat on an exposed root. He needed to think.

She sank into the grass gratefully, smiling at him. He didn't smile back. Truth be told, he was questioning why he had waited for her outside the school in the first place.

Their relationship wasn't equal. It had been once, but that had finished. She was the High School Princess, he was the Big Man on Campus. They belonged together, right? Wrong. She was bored by his conversation, he despised her gossiping. They hated each other's friends. She called him only when she needed a ride to the mall or an escort to some social event. He called her when he needed help with his homework or fashion advice. He didn't even find her that attractive.

It was that, the lack of attraction that really bothered him. She was beautiful, anyone could see that. Elegant, graceful, perfect in almost every way. So why didn't he want to sleep with her?

They'd tried, come close a few times. But there was just no passion in it for either of them. They gave up after the third attempt and resigned themselves to a loveless relationship. Had The Program not happened when it did, they would have broken up within days.

Clark was dragged out of his musings by a noise. Looking around, he found it was only Diana looking through her backpack. Why did she have to be so noisy? He turned away to look towards the moon…

…and the foliage exploded behind him.

Adam Jameson (Boy # 6) tore out of the bushes and straight towards Diana, waving an axe around his head and screaming manically. Diana screamed too but she was frozen. A curse flitted briefly through Clark's mind as he threw himself at Adam, grabbing the boy's axe-wielding arm and trying to kick his legs out from under him. But he didn't calculate the force of his attack, and both boys tumbled over an outcropping and rolled uncontrollably towards the base of a deep ravine.

"Clark!"

He heard Diana shriek his name from the trees and wanted to yell back at her to be quiet, but Adam was on top of him, trying to bring the axe down on top of his head.

Adam was drooling; his lips were swollen and bloody. His normally trendy hairstyle looked like demon's horns in the moonlight. He was laughing…

_BANG!_

Adam slumped to one side as half of his face disappeared, the other half still grinning its twisted grin. Poor Adam. He was a nice guy, if a bit on the snobby side…who had killed him? Clark pushed the body off of him and took a good look at the person standing over him.

Bruce Wayne.

Holding a shotgun.

_(Boy #6 Adam Jameson: Dead. 21 to go.)_

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Looking back, one might have considered Solomon Grundy a danger to society. Though he had never openly displayed behaviour that would have given rise to such a claim, but the reasons were there. They lay deep inside of him, hidden from view and carefully controlled. The catalyst for his madness and the control of said madness was one of his female classmates. But the origins of the madness came from a single incident that happened many years before he met the girl, when he was a child.

The Grundys were white trash, pure and simple. They might have had the widescreen TV, the computer with broadband access, two cars and a swimming pool but they were undoubtedly white trash. Eddie Grundy was a mechanic, trained by his father before him, and a heavy drinker. Margie Grundy was a stay-at-home mother who stayed at home with her six children, four boys and two girls. Solomon was the second to youngest child, older than Zachariah but younger than Esther.

All of the Grundys had problems. The oldest boy was mentally retarded, probably due to Margie's drinking during pregnancy. The oldest girl was dating the roughest hood in town and he was most likely beating her up, though she strenuously denied it. The second girl was grossly overweight, the tow youngest boys were out of control on drink and drugs, and the parents were both using alcohol as an anaesthetic to daily life. They would have ticked along quite nicely and Solomon would have become a common hood had his Dad not pushed him into the garden that July afternoon.

Dad had an ulcer but he didn't trust doctors, so he downed a couple of beers and tried to sleep off the pain. That meant twelve-year-old Solomon couldn't come back in until dinnertime. He mooched around the back garden for about half an hour, trying to decide what to do. He could have gone to the abandoned housing estate to hang out with his oldest brother Noah, but hanging out with Noah was getting harder. He'd been cool when Solomon was younger, having a guy that was your age mentally but twice the size, but at ten was just stupid. He didn't have many friends in the area; all his friends were from Bridgeton, across the river. The well-heeled kids of Lavender Peaks weren't allowed associate with the Grundys.

Solomon mooched around the garden some more, then he thought he'd go into the shed in the back garden. His Dad had three abandoned cars in there that he was stripping for parts. He wandered around the old machines for a while until he saw the bird.

It was a big bird, as birds go. A swallow, or perhaps a starling. It had broken its wings or something. It was just lying in a crumpled heap in front of the wheel of a car. It was still breathing. When it saw Solomon, its breathing increased and its eyes rolled, but it didn't move. It couldn't. Out of curiosity, Solomon picked it up. He was big for his age, and his hands were the size of a grown man's. The bird felt light as a feather in his grasp. He turned it in his massive paws, pulled back its wings to examine the structure, poked and prodded until the inevitable happened. The bird's neck broke.

But then something unusual happened. He felt a sensation inside of him, a sudden elation that was similar to a state of sexual arousal. He went further, started to break the little bones of the bird's wings, the legs, the feet, but the thrill was gone, the bird was dead. He wanted the strange feeling, the good feeling. It was fading fast. By dinnertime, it had disappeared altogether. He remembered it, and carried it with him through the years.

Solomon became steadily cut off from his family and from society in general in his search for 'the feeling.' A psychiatrist would have correctly identified this as his sexual awakening, but his obsession with it was worrying. He saved up pocket money to buy hamsters and mice from the pet shops and ran to his hideaway, the burnt-out car on the hill, and then he broke their bones one by one. As he got older, he would follow the breaking with masturbation.

He didn't date in high school. He just wasn't attracted to girls in the same way as his peers. Sure, he'd peek at a pretty girl's breasts or legs if they were within his eyeline, but his preoccupation was with wondering how that body part would feel if he tried to break it. He already knew that he didn't like the feel of big bones as they snapped. He'd tested it out on cows and pigs, and even on his fellow humans during football matches. Solomon thought he'd never get 'the feeling' with a human being.

Then Shayera Hol transferred to their school.

It was the first time Solomon could ever recall getting 'the feeling' with an actual girl, and it hit him with the force of a hurricane. To most guys, Shayera was cute in a sort of non-sexual, my-eleven-year-old-sister-is-cute kind of way. Solomon saw only her tiny bones, a thin skeleton clothes in a paper-fine sheet of skin. She sat in front of him in class all day, and he spent the entire day staring at her, desperately longing to reach forward and snap those diminutive bones. You could have called it his first crush.

For two years, he tried to arrange to be alone with her. He wasn't sure what he'd do if he did get to be alone with her, but he thought he'd figure it out when the time came. It never did though. Shayera seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to him. He only ever saw her at school, and after school he sometimes waited around to see where she was but it was like she would just disappear into thin air. For two years, he was obsessed with her.

And finally, they were both in _The Program._ He'd been scared at first, but it didn't take long for 'the feeling' to come back to him. There was potential in the situation. If he found Shayera before someone else did, she'd have nowhere to run. And there was no law stopping him form doing exactly what he wanted with her. Pulling his weapon out of his rucksack, he found it to be an ice pick. Not great, but unless Shayera had a gun he had the upper hand. He heard the snap of a twig and whirled around to see who it was. He saw no-one, but he knew there was someone there.

"Who's there?" he yelled angrily. He was hyped up on fear and due to his previous line of thinking a little turned on, so he couldn't control the level of his voice. There was an echo into the distance.

"Don't make me come after you, bastard! It'll be ugly!" he yelled again. The person stepped out from behind a tree, and Solomon knew for certain that God was on his side.

It was Shayera.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...


	6. Chapter 6

**The Pyrrhic Days**

**Chapter Six**

This is gonna be one long-ass chapter. I go into more detail here because I like where this particular plot is going. Things are going to get very, very violent now…

By the way, if you are sensitive to past historic atrocities, don't read this Chapter. Particularly if you are Jewish and might take offence.

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Life had been very cruel to the Hol family.

In his more coherent days, the patriarch Erich Hol would claim he was a descendent of Benjamin from the Bible, who had started his life by killing his mother through childbirth. Certainly it seemed like the family was cursed.

Erich Hol married his childhood sweetheart in 1920 in Poland, when they were both seventeen. Within a few years he was the father of four children. His oldest son Jakob took after his father and followed him into work at the Polish coal mines at the age of fourteen. His second son Rudolph was a sensitive soul who preferred to spend his time reading and studying the Talmud. His father often teased Rudolph over his lack of masculine strength, but secretly he was proud of his son's scholarly leanings. His eldest daughter Margot was a rather plain girl with a quiet, almost stoic nature. She would make some man a great wife, her mother often told Erich. At the age of thirteen she was responsible for the family meals while her mother, Josefina, worked as a nurse in Warsaw. And then there was Ludivine.

Little Ludivine was the apple of her father's eye. She was a pretty, merry little child with a head of bright red curls and sparkling blue eyes. The family were desperately poor, but every spare zloty Erich made at the mines he saved to buy treats for his favourite daughter. He loved his other children, but to him Ludivine was special.

In 1939, Erich and his family moved from their small village to Warsaw. The National Socialist Party, also known as the Nazi party, was firmly in control of the country and many of the Polish residents were anti-Semitic to begin with. Erich saw no reason to abandon the country he had been born in; he was illiterate and had few skills beyond his natural strength, it would have been too hard for him to drag his family to another part of the world to start all over again. This turned out to be the greatest mistake he would ever make.

The Hols, along with thousands of other Jewish families, were moved into the Warsaw ghetto, an area of just about 307 hectares in 1940. Erich could not find work in this new environment, neither could his sons. Josefina became the main breadwinner of the family as she was still allowed to work as a nurse. But she could only make 375 zloty a month, and simple things like bread cost nearly 50 zloty a pound. The family struggled, and Erich held fast to his belief that things would get better. Ludivine turned seven in this bleak place, and her older sister managed to make a crude birthday cake out of breadcrumbs and a small amount of clean water and fruit juice.

In December 1940, Erich's oldest son Jakob boarded a train to a place called Chelmno, where it was said there was work for Jews. Rumours flew around the ghetto that those who had left were actually gassed, but Erich refused to believe that. His son was a big, strong boy; he was too valuable a worker to dispose of so casually. Two years went by, and the German soldiers were shooting Jews casually in the middle of the street, and still Erich clung to the hope that things would get better; they had to. He imagined his son building railroads or bridges in the Polish countryside. He ignored his wife's hysterical tears every night, his daughter's fretting over going outside during the day. He even ignored Ludivine's nightmares.

In the summer and the autumn of 1942, the ghetto was emptied of people and Erich's family were torn apart. His wife and eldest daughter were sent to Treblinka, his remaining son to the concentration camp in Dachau and little Ludivine to Bergen-Belsen. Erich himself was sent to Auschwitz. He was put to work there, and lived as a labouring prisoner until the end of the war. When the Allied armies arrived to release the prisoners of the camps, Erich looked forward to reconnecting with his family. It took months for him to discover that his family no longer existed.

Jakob Hol had been gassed in Chelmno in 1940 at the age of eighteen. Rudolph Hol was shot at Dachau in 1943 after being caught trying to escape at the age of nineteen. Josefina and Margot Hol both died at Treblinka, the former of typhus and the latter of a single shot to the head. Ludivine had starved to death at Bergen-Belsen in 1943, less than a month after her brother Rudolph. She was only ten. Erich was so overcome with grief when he read about his little girl's death that he tried to drown himself in a drainage ditch. He was rescued and sent on his way by two allied soldiers. He never discovered where his family had been buried.

In 1949, at the age of 46, Erich married a 19-year-old girl named Dinah. She was a gypsy girl and a fellow Holocaust survivor, and she was a rather strange position. The forced imprisonment and subsequent extermination of her family had actually been of assistance to her. She had been promised to an older cousin at the age of five and would have been married to the man at the age of eleven had the Nazis not captured them first. She was the only survivor of her clan. Ironically, she had lived in Bergen-Belsen alongside Ludivine Hol.

The couple had three children, two boys and a girl. They had started a new life in America, in a small area of Connecticut with a good school and a new job for Erich as a factory floor manager. But the children were as unfortunate as Erich's earlier brood had been; arguably, even more unlucky. Dinah Hol had no great love for her husband and had married him for the sake of convenience. Erich thought his wife was a strange, dour creature and avoided her as much as possible. Thin, dark-haired, sallow-cheeked Dinah was a far cry from his plump, merry Josefina. Dinah felt almost nothing for her children, and even called them 'Erich's children' to neighbours and friends. Erich was a good father, but the shadow of the Holocaust and his lost babies haunted his every affectionate glance at them.

Eric Hol Junior grew into a sulky teenager who often came to blows with his father. Every time he misbehaved, he was compared to the dead child he most resembled, Jakob Hol. This kind of attention traumatised him terribly and he responded by dulling his pain with alcohol and criminal activity. In 1970 Eric was killed in a car crash along with two of his friends. He had been driving drunk and careened off of the edge of a quarry. Erich cried like a baby at the funeral, but worse was to come. Erich and Dinah's second son, Marcus, had worshipped his brother like a God. He blamed his father for Eric's death and in the end he couldn't take the pain of it all. Marcus hanged himself at the age of fifteen in 1971. This time Dinah shed tears, but mostly tears of rage. She accused her husband of killing her sons in the foyer of the funeral home.

This left only Erich and Dinah's daughter Hannah. The boys had found their upbringing hard, but for Hannah it was made even harder by the ghost of Ludivine Hol, now dead almost thirty years. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his damaged mind Erich had believed that by having a daughter he could resurrect Ludivine, but the reality was disappointing. Hannah was like her mother; moody, ill-tempered and quiet. Ludivine had been a happy child, a good child. By the time his daughter was in her teens, Ludivine had become saintly in his memories.

Hannah Hol ran away in 1980 at the age of sixteen, finding the memory of her father's perfectly dead daughter just too much to bear. She went to New York and lived rough for two years, then managed to find a home in a run-down tenement building. She had become hopelessly addicted to cocaine at this stage and soon found herself moving onto heroin. The heroin helped her forget about Ludivine, but whenever she had a bad trip she would see a small red-haired girl trying to rip her eyes out. Then more heroin was needed to cleanse the image from her mind, until she couldn't afford it. One thing led to another and soon Hannah was a prostitute.

It turned out to be an easy choice for her to make. Certain men paid for sex and didn't care where they got it from, and if she was drugged enough she would barely feel a thing. Years passed like minutes, and she was always on the lookout for another fix. She paid for everything the same way; with her body. Her landlord slept with her in return for the tiny flat she occupied, her dealers slept with her in lieu of payment for the drugs, even the local bartender could trade a bottle of vodka for Hannah's company. Despite the ravages of her rough lifestyle, she was an attractive girl. She took after her mother in that respect; her gypsy blood kept her going.

Such was Hannah's life until 1987, when something unexpected happened. She discovered, quite by accident, that she was pregnant. At first she believed it to be a figment of her imagination and made no change to her lifestyle. The reality of her situation didn't hit until she went into labour one night. It was actually one of her dealers that noticed her waters had broken while she was in bed with him. She'd been having contractions for hours but she was too high to realise.

The baby girl was born in a half-derelict public hospital less than a mile from the flat where she'd probably been conceived. She was three months premature, pathetically undersized and addicted to heroin. The doctors put her in an incubator for a month and she only just managed to pull through. In the end, the baby was wrapped up in a blanket and shoved into her mother's arms by a nurse too busy to have checked the details of the birth. She hadn't even been given a name.

The next two years were a dangerous time for the baby girl. Her mother regarded the birth as an interruption to her regular life and ignored the screaming child most of the time. Every now and then Hannah would remember to feed her child or change her, or a visitor to her flat would take over as a nice little distraction. One of Hannah's dealers, a big black man named Jericho, was particularly fond of the baby and would sing Amazing Grace to her as Hannah injected herself with her drug of choice. Luckily, by the time she was able to crawl and then to walk, the baby had somehow learned to forage for food herself in the rubbish-strewn apartment.

Hannah still only half-believed that she'd had a child. On the rare occasions that she remembered, she would even name the baby. Sometimes it was Lucy, sometimes Susan, sometimes Grace. Sometimes, in her bleaker moments, it was Ludivine. The nameless child simply stared back at the skeletal woman without comprehension. As far as she was concerned, the woman was just living in the flat with her and the rats and cockroaches. At the age of three she was actually able to speak quite well. She was able to imitate what the people on the television said, but her communication skills were non-existent. Her mother didn't speak to her, so she spoke to herself. She didn't understand a word she was saying.

In the summer of 1993, the inevitable happened. Hannah had been taking larger and larger doses of heroin to get the desired effect and one night she took an overdose and after three hours of struggling to breathe she died. Her child, now five years old and closer to a wild animal than a human being, knew that the woman was dead and avoided the corpse for as long as she could. Hannah's body wasn't discovered for two months.

Erich Hol received a phone call in the early hours of the morning to tell him that his last child was dead. He hung up the phone as soon as he heard the woman on the line say 'morgue' and sobbed quietly into his pillow. Even Dinah let a few tears escape her eyes, but she didn't turn to comfort her husband. At the age of 90, Erich would live to bury all seven of his children. But then the woman who had informed him of Hannah's death called again, this time to tell him that he was a grandfather. For the first time since his family had moved to Warsaw so many years ago, he felt actual joy.

The joy dissipated slightly when he saw his little granddaughter. At five years old, she was the size of a toddler. She muttered gibberish to herself constantly, had no idea how to use a knife or fork and refused to sleep in a bed. Strangely enough, she had taught herself to use the toilet. Erich ignored her sometimes dreadful behaviour and threw himself into raising her properly. Within a year she was much healthier and able to string a sentence together, but the doctors said that her growth would be permanently stunted by the drug cocktails she'd ingested in the womb. Erich comforted her by saying she'd never be too big for him to hold in his arms. That year he named her Shayera Hol, after his grandmother. He'd been considering calling her Ludivine, and she had Ludivine's red hair, but n the end he decided against it. It looked like he was putting the ghosts of the past behind him. Shayera grew into a tomboyish child and then into a fairly balanced teenager, and everything seemed to be going well.

Ludivine refused to stay dead.

In 1999, two days before he was due to celebrate his one hundredth birthday, Erich had a brain haemorrhage. The damage to his mind wiped out all the knowledge of his second wife, his three dead children and his beloved granddaughter. He was unable to remember anything but the day when his Ludivine was taken from him by the Germans. Confined to his bed and unable to feed himself or clean himself, he screamed for his daughter every night. The drugs that he was given by doctors only quietened him; he still whispered her name in his sleep. The only comfort he had was Shayera, who eventually became Ludivine in his eyes. He would call for Ludivine while she was at school, then she would have to run in the door to comfort him. It was a hellish existence for both of them. Dinah largely kept to herself.

Shayera sunk into her role with weary resignation. Her mother had fought against it and lost, and Shayera's motto had long been 'better a live jackal than a dead lion.' She hated Ludivine with a furious passion, but she still learned all of the Polish songs the dead girl had sung in order to fool poor senile Erich. School was one long drag, waiting to get home to comfort the man who had suffered so much. She knew he wasn't long for this world and who could blame her for wanting to make his last few days on Earth comfortable? Erich dragged on for three years and during her teenage era Shayera made no friends and took up tennis merely as a way of releasing some of the tension she felt. Every day as her grandfather called her by a dead girl's name, she felt more uneasy. It felt like he was digging her grave with his words. Like someday maybe Ludivine would burst out of her own grave somewhere in North Europe and try to take her place. Shayera started to see Ludivine in her dreams, just like her mother had.

And now she was in _The Program. _

"Well at least she can't get me here," Shayera thought sourly as she made her way quietly through the forest. There was a trail just a few feet away, but trails meant people and she wanted to be alone. She imagined that Erich was calling her at home, but she'd probably never see him again.

"What the hell did you do to doom us all like this?" she asked him mentally. Losing four children and a wife to war, three children to insanity and the only grandchild to a state-sponsored killing spree?

Well, it could be worse she mused. That pervert Grundy who kept stalking her could find her…

…spoke too soon.

Solomon Grundy was suddenly there, grinning like the maniac he had to be and holding something very sharp in his massive paws.

The Hols were cursed, all right.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

J'onn Jonze didn't go far when he left the school. There was a barn near the school, just near the playing area. Everyone had passed it by and he was safe. Sort of.

J'onn had an advantage over the rest. He'd lived in a warzone for years, lost three brothers and a fiancée to bombs, he knew what to do. He would choose the most ramshackle standing structure to wait in until light, stand his ground if anyone came in and run like hell in the morning. Basic Croatian military tactics.

Actually, J'onn was feeling somewhat foolhardy. The guilt that followed him around the globe after My'riah's death still niggled at him from time to time. They'd made a pact to each other that if one got injured the other would save himself. That's why he ran when she was shot. She may have been a stupid lovesick kid, far too young to get married no matter what her mother said, but she had been sweet in her own little way. And J'onn had loved her, like a kid sister.

He had only made one friend in the US. Clark Kent. In some ways, Clark reminded him of My'riah. They both talked a hundred miles an hour when they were excited, they both ate like pigs, they both had that cheeky careless little smile… And anyway, J'onn had had enough of the guilt following him around.

He would find Clark and die protecting him.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Pyrrhic Days**

**Chapter Seven**

Who wants to see our favourite superheroes getting roughed up? Anyone? No? I don't care, I'm gonna do it anyway!

I don't know how to make a bomb and I don't want to know.

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A thin blue flume of smoke floated from the barrel of the shotgun. Clark's gaze was drawn to the flume, and try as he might he couldn't look away. At any moment a shower of bullets could spill out of the smoking barrel and end his participation in The Program forever. He felt beads of cold sweat collect on his bow, and even in his panic he prayed to God that Diana would stay quiet and keep herself safe.

_"Clark! Where are you?"_

God wasn't listening.

The holder of the gun turned at the waist to stare off into the distance, towards where Diana was. His gun stayed where it was.

"This is it," thought Clark. "He's going to shoot me, and then he'll shoot her because she can't keep her goddamn mouth shut."

But when the shooter turned around, he was smiling. The smile was more amused than sinister. When he spoke, his voice was gruff but he sounded like he could burst into laughter at any moment.

"You'd better tell your girlfriend to keep her voice down. Anyone could come after you," he said.

He threw the barrel of the gun casually over his shoulder and walked away towards another copse of woods. Clark watched him leave, too stunned to do anything else. A moment later, Diana came crashing out of the same brush he had fallen through moments before

(_when Adam Jameson was still alive)_

and ran towards him.

"Clark, are you okay? What the hell happened?" she asked, her voice almost hysterically loud.

Clark rose slowly to his feet and brushed down the front of his uniform. His fingers brushed a warm wetness that only barely registered with him as Adam's blood. Amazingly his rucksack was still hanging off of his shoulder. Diana peered at him, confused.

"Clark?"

He looked at her so coldly that she shuddered.

"Keep your goddamn voice down. Anyone could come after us," he hissed at her.

He began walking towards the same copse of woods that Bruce had disappeared into. After a moment, Diana followed him.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

"Tate, what are you doing?"

The face of the man in front of Harley holding the gun was familiar, but it wasn't her wonderful boyfriend Tate. It was someone else, some demon that was using his face. Tate would never point a gun at Harley. Tate_ loved _Harley!

"Get out of here, bitch!" the demon-Tate hissed at her. He brought the gun closer to her face.

"Tate, what are you doing?" she cried. Fat tears were welling up in her eyes, distorting Tate's image even further.

"Get out of here or I'll kill you! Think I'm gonna take care of you? Think again!" he roared at her.

She burst into tears. She was beginning to understand a little. Maybe Tate did love her, but nowhere near as much as he loved himself.

"Don't you love me any more? Why are you doing this to me?" she howled.

"Love you? Yeah right! I was the only guy who would look twice at you and you hopped into bed with me! Think I'll risk my life protected an easy little cow like you? You're lucky I haven't pulled the trigger yet! Now scram!"

She didn't move.

"Didn't you hear me? I said scram!" he roared again, bumping her forehead none too gently with the gun.

"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, so quietly he almost didn't hear her.

"Then I'll shoot you," he whispered back.

"Go ahead," she sobbed. "Without you I've got nothing. So go ahead and kill me. I don't care."

His finger squeezed the trigger, ever so gently. She had her head bowed. She held her breath, waiting to feel the bullet enter her skull. Tate had made her happy. So what if she was going to die? The barrel of the gun trembled at her head. Why hadn't he pulled the trigger? Suddenly the cool metal left her skin. There was a light whistling sound and then Harley was pulled forward into Tate's arms.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed into her neck, "I'm so sorry! I love you…"

She hugged him back. Tears rolled down her own face too, and suddenly things weren't so scary any more. He'd thrown away his gun. He loved her, he really did. He loved her as much as she loved him.

"I just got scared Harley! I thought you'd be better off without me! I'm sorry," he cried in her ear.

"Ssh, it's okay. I know. We'll be okay," she soothed. They would be fine. He loved her, she loved him, everything would be all right…

_BANG!_

Tate's noisy sobbing was cut off, and Harley felt a warm gush of fluid pour down her upper torso. She pushed him away from her, only to find a large red hole where Tate's left eye had been. The hole was dribbling red liquid. She heard a shrill, piercing noise and wondered what it was, unaware that it was her own screaming. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the screaming was cut off. The two bodies fell back into the wet grass, his on top of hers.

Ivy O Hara glared at the bodies. She hadn't liked Tate (pimply and perverted) or Harley (fat and a fashion victim). She had hidden when she heard them talking, but was fortunate to have had Tate's gun practically thrown at her feet. She felt no remorse when she killed them.

Their deaths were as ugly as they were.

_(Boy #10 Tate Jones: Dead. Girl #8 Harley Quinn: Dead. 20 to go)_

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Wally was jogging lightly. The panic hadn't hit him still, even though he was hearing loud noises coming from various parts of the jungle. There were loud bangs coming from two different directions, glass smashing quite nearby, rattling like machine-gunfire from far away and he thought he heard a girl screaming coming from one of the hills.

He stopped frequently to catch breath, but never stayed in the one place for more than five minutes. He travelled in a zigzag fashion, avoiding the trails. That was how he came across Samantha Polley.

She was, to put it bluntly, a mess.

The left lens of her glasses was cracked. Her lower lip was cut and bleeding, and she was biting down hard on it. Her skirt was torn and covered with mud. Her hair, which had been wound into a tight bun, was sticking up in frazzled peaks, making her look like the snakewoman from Greek mythology. Most troubling were her eyes. They were bloodshot and opened so wide they were almost ready to pop out of their sockets.

"Samantha," he began, "are you…"

He was cut off in mid speech when a bullet whizzed by his ear.

" I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die…" she was muttering.

He was a lucky guy. Samantha was a terrible shot. She raised her gun and fired again, and missed again. Wally didn't test his luck. He took off sprinting again into the forest and left her behind in a matter of minutes. When he finally stopped running, he could still hear her screaming.

_"I don't wanna die!"_

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Lex Luthor had sulphur. He'd found it in a barn. He had taken a lighter from Seth Merchant's pocket. He had gasoline, some cloths, some shock absorbers taken from an old car.

He was going to make a bomb. Some of the fools on the island were bound to band together. He needed to save his bullets for the ones that went alone. Then he could drive the last few into a corner like sheep and blow them up in one fell swoop.

The sun was starting to rise. It was as red as fresh blood.


	8. Chapter 8

The Pyrrhic Days

Chapter Seven

In response to one of the reviews I got, I'd like to mention that I actually don't have anything against Wonder Woman. Her massive shoulders freak me out a little and I'd be lying if I said she was my favourite character, but I don't wish any specific harm on her. As for Clark's hostility towards her, it's an example of how emotions both positive and negative are enhanced by desperate situations. Clark wouldn't be so unreasonably angry if they were at home and she was complaining about his choice of restaurant for their date. Don't worry; Diana will prove herself more than capable of taking care of herself soon.

This Chapter is not for the squeamish. You have been warned!

And since I haven't put up a disclaimer yet, here it is.

I don't own Justice League or Battle Royale.

Yet.

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During the years that the Program was at its most popular, it was broadcast live on seventy channels. You could watch an overview of the action on Zirconia One, or you could choose to track a particular contestant on the periphery channels like Excite! or Parasite Three. Recordings of the shows were illegal and making or owning a video or DVD was punishable by five to twenty years in prison. The shows became the pirate films of the day.

Shows were cut together by season or genre. Hardcore porn tapes depicting contestants having intercourse, whether willingly or not, were very popular. But the most popular were the tapes of the various ways in which the contestants were killed.

During the year 2034, the best selling Program feature was a DVD set called Bloodbath 61. The following fight was rated at 95 excitement level by satisfied viewers.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Shayera couldn't move. Along with her fear, she felt a palpable sense of disgust that she was showing weakness in front of Grundy.

She could run, couldn't she?

She was fast. She'd had to be, no slowpokes allowed on the tennis court. He was pretty fast himself, no slowpokes allowed on the football pitch either. But surely she was faster! He was dragging around three hundred pounds of fat, muscle, skin and bone. But there was the problem. The muscle. She could be faster, but maybe he had more stamina.

He was still grinning; she wanted to wipe that grin off of his face.

"It's you," he said, and his eyes glazed over slightly. "You're okay."

"Yeah," she said.

"I was worried about you."

"Why?" she said cautiously. Maybe she had mistaken his intentions for something more sinister…

"Well, you're so tiny… you're a target," he said, still smiling. Shayera bristled.

"I'm as much a target as anyone else here," she snapped, and then she regretted her angry tone. She didn't want to give him a reason to come after her.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to offend you. But you'll be safer now. You've got me to protect you," he said, keeping his tone casual, so casual she almost missed the hint of threat in the words.

"Thanks, but I'd rather be alone," she said, and took a step back. She could make a break for it, while he was still being civil…

"Alone? Don't be a goose! You'll be killed. Stick with me," he laughed, but a hint of anger had crept into his voice.

"No thanks. I'll be fine," she said. She took another tentative step backwards.

"What, you think you're too good for me?" he suddenly shouted. His face was beet red and his teeth were bared like an angry dog's.

"That's not it and you know it!" she shouted back, and then mentally cursed herself. His mood had shifted so suddenly, nothing good could come of this.

"Of course not," he growled scornfully. "It's not like I'm the only guy in school you go out of your way to avoid, right?"

"Sure," she said, matching his tone with the same amount of sarcasm. "And it's not like I'm the only girl you stare at all day, every day, right?"

"What can I say? I like you," he said, his smile returning.

"You don't like me. You don't even know me," she said, taking another, almost imperceptible step backwards. Soon she'd be able to make a break for it. "You just randomly decided one day you were gonna follow me around. I can't imagine why, but I'm sure you have your reasons. But if you do like me for whatever reason, you'll let me go."

With that, she turned her back on him and walked away, hoping for the best. Several heavy footfalls behind her proved that the best wasn't worth hoping for.

_"Stay where you are, bitch!"_ Solomon roared at her.

"Make me!" she roared back. All of her fear had been replaced with white-hot rage and before it could prompt her into doing something really stupid, she broke into a run. Tearing through the trees with what sounded like an enraged elephant thundering after her, she was sure she could lose him.

She didn't get far.

There was a sharp whistling sound, like the call of some strange bird, and then a sharp pain burst through her left leg. The surprise knocked her off balance and she fell forward, crashing into the leaf litter. The leaves were wet, but they shouldn't have been. It was early autumn and it hadn't rained in ages. She turned over with some difficulty and saw the source of her pain.

An ice pick. Buried in the back of her left thigh, an inch and a half below the skirt. Blood was actively dribbling out of the wound; her left leg was coated with a thick layer of warm redness. Solomon Grundy was closing in.

The sun was just beginning to appear amongst the clouds.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

Having cleaned her blade properly and checking the area thoroughly for other people, Selina Kyle lay on a bed in an abandoned house. She didn't sleep, it would have been foolish under such circumstances, but she did allow her mind to wander.

1999.

She'd been ten years old back then. Such a talented girl.

The Tri-State Ice Skating Championships had been due to take place in July, but she'd had her routine prepared since March. She knew every move, but still memorized them at night to make sure. She practiced every three days, it was as much as she could afford with the scant money she made washing dishes in the bar her mother worked in.

Her mother was a hard-drinking, hard-living woman who told Selina often she was only worth as much as a man thought she was worth. She lived by her own philosophy, and often the woman would make her rent by the good grace and thick wallet of some boyfriend or other. Selina took her mother's words with a pinch of salt. Such things might have been true for Priscilla Kyle, twenty-six year old alcoholic with a young daughter and an inviting figure, but not for Selina Kyle, ten year old skating prodigy with spindly legs and the grace of a cat.

Mr. Carson, the kindly man with the slightly crooked teeth who was her skating coach told Selina often enough that she was almost too good for her age. This pleased Selina to no end, for disregarding the crush she was nursing on Mr. Carson, skating was her one true passion.

It was all about control. Ice was supposed to be a force of nature, wild and free and untameable. It led you astray, deceiving you with the solid surface and then sweeping you off of your feet. But with the right moves, the proper application of weight and pressure, you could bend it to your will. When you did, it felt as though you were gliding, flying, dancing weightlessly on a sheet of silk. You knew you could slip and be hurt, maybe even killed if you strayed just a little too far out of the comfort zone, but that was all part of the thrill. Testing how far you could go and springing back just in time. Selina loved the feeling she got when she was on the ice. Free and graceful and beautiful.

And then she was tripped.

Priscilla's boyfriend of three weeks had run off with their money, leaving none for rent and debt collectors crowing at the door. Out of desperation, Priscilla grabbed her daughter's skates along with a few other possessions and pawned them. Selina attempted to make back enough money to buy them back, but the competition came and went before she could. The next competition wasn't for three years, and she'd be too old to compete then. Heartsick and resentful, Selina gave up her dream.

Time passed, and Selina lost her skating body. She developed early, large breasts and wide hips replacing her toned athletic figure. She had lost the urge and the drive to skate, but not her craving for the feeling it had given her. It didn't take long for her to discover it when men started to take an interest in her.

The first man Selina slept with was one of her mother's boyfriends. He had curly hair and slightly crooked teeth which reminded her of Mr. Carson. When he kissed her and started touching her, she didn't resist. It was scary but oddly thrilling, knowing that she had such an effect on a man. They had sex on the couch as Priscilla slept upstairs. Selina was twelve years old.

As she lay on the old creaky bed on the deserted island, Selina thought of her many lovers. There had been the first, who smelled of beer and sweat and was gone a week later. Mr. Carson, who turned out to have a yen for young girls. Joey Pearson, who was a year older than her and who couldn't do it the first two times he tried and finally succeeded by closing his eyes. Ricky Merrill, who had a car and lots of booze who treated her rough but became very obsessed with her.

Then she thought of the ones she hadn't slept with. Clark Kent. He was with that freakishly tall society girl. What a scandal that would have been, Mr. Big Shot caught with the school tramp. Lex Luthor. He was probably gay. J'onn Jonze. Probably had his balls shot off in Slovakia or wherever the hell he was from judging by the amount of attention he'd given her-or any girl for that matter- since transferring. John Stewart. She'd never sleep with a nigger, no matter how desperate. Priscilla said they were crawling with disease. Wally West. Another homo, most likely. He'd never even glanced at her. Solomon Grundy. He was obsessed with that Polack who looked like a paedophile's dream come true. Peter Baker. He was in love with that prim and proper little madam who looked like she was itching for a shag most of the time. Everyone else had had a go at her.

The kicker was that Selina didn't really enjoy sex. It was smelly and uncomfortable and, on occasion, painful. She wasn't attracted to any of the men she had slept with. The control was the important thing. Making a man do things he didn't normally do, things he had no control over. Sometimes, when she was with a man, she felt like she was skating again.

But then she had killed Belinda. The feeling had run through her like a tidal wave, cut in deep like a knife. It was a hundred times more powerful than skating, and a thousand times more powerful than sex. Killing made her feel like she'd never felt before. Colours became clearer, tastes were sharpened, sounds were more lucid.

The feeling had faded as she lay on the bed, idly twirling the dusty sheets with her fingers. She had made up her mind about one thing; she was never having sex again. She'd been a cheap whore for too long and with only a little benefit to herself. Killing reaped more benefit and at little cost to herself. Only problem was, she hadn't really got a decent weapon.

She smiled as she hugged herself. All in good time.

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Clark was quiet, and so Diana stayed quiet too.

She couldn't understand why he was being so hostile. Sure, they were in a desperate situation, but didn't he understand how scared she was? She felt tears prick her eyelids, and she hastily blinked them away. Tears were uncommon in the Chamberlain household. Her mother had shown her long ago how best to suppress them.

She pulled a long silk scarf out of her skirt pocket and tied up her hair, just to have something to do. Long black wisps still floated around her face, but her neck was exposed to the cool autumn air. It brought with it a sense of reality, where before there had been only a strange nightmare. She had witnessed three deaths, and yet she wasn't hysterical.

Maybe it was the fear that kept her grounded. Fear of Clark.

Who was to say he wouldn't pull out a weapon and attack her? He had never been the most protective of boyfriends. Physically, yes. Emotionally, no. She sometimes told him her problems and he didn't know how to respond, or he didn't care. And since becoming friend with that exchange student, he'd been like a robot.

There was a crackle in the bushes ahead, and they both started. Clark didn't move in front of her to protect her, she noted bitterly. The bushes parted. They braced themselves.

She was surprised at her own reaction when she saw Bruce. She smiled.

"Are you two stalking me or what?" he asked gruffly, then turned his back on them and walked away. Clark gaped stupidly for a moment, then followed.

"Why didn't you shoot me?" he demanded.

"No reason to," said Bruce. "You weren't a threat. The other guy was."

"That was no reason to…"

Clark's spiel was cut off midway by the shotgun being shoved in his face.

"Let's just get one thing clear," growled Bruce. "If I think you're a threat, I shoot, and I shoot to kill. If you're not a threat, you're okay in my book. You want to stick with me, fine. I could use and extra pair of eyes. But no funny stuff, okay?"

Clark gulped, but he nodded. Bruce lowered the gun. Then he turned his gaze on Diana, who suddenly felt as though she was completely naked in front of him. He smiled graciously, but not warmly, at her.

"So this is your lady? Sorry for the rough talk, but needs must, you know?" he shrugged carelessly as he talked to her. She nodded, swallowing a fearful cry. He had done nothing to deserve it, but already she liked him.

The three made their way south, towards the caves. Every time Diana looked to her boyfriend, he was scowling at her.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Pyrrhic Days**

**Chapter Nine**

I know this is taking me a while to update, but please be patient. I moved house recently and I only have Net access on weekends. I'm doing my best!

Once again, I will warn you that the violence in this fic is going to get more graphic as time goes by. And I don't own the characters.

By the by, a Khastriya is the old Hindu term for the second highest level in the caste system, including nobles and royalty. Pariahs were the lowest, considered no better than animals. Shylock is the Jew from the story 'The Merchant of Venice' who demanded a pound of flesh from a merchant named Antonio to repay a debt. Antonio had insulted him earlier and Shylock wished for vengeance. Read it, it's fecking class.

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He had no strategy.

John Stewart was the kind of guy who needed a strategy. He wasn't really a natural athlete, but he was possessed of enough discipline to plan out his moves in advance. That was what kept him on the football pitch, besides his size. But how could anyone out-plan the Program?

He sat down on a boulder to try and think. He could keep a level head under most circumstances, but at that moment he felt as unprepared and confused as he had at the age of seven when his brother took him paintballing (that was the year before said brother fell in with 'the wrong crowd' and forgot he had a family). The sun was starting to peek out through the clouds. John estimated the time to be about five-o-clock. Daylight would make it easier to find Shayera.

He concentrated all his thoughts on her, which was easy to do. Despite the brief nature of their one encounter, he was completely infatuated with her. It was nothing like his relationship with Katma. That had been a slow-burning fondness that had become romantic purely due to Katma's persistence. He had lost his virginity to her and they both deeply regretted it. It was the final nail in the coffin that was their relationship. Things would be different with Shayera though…

He shook his head. He couldn't get carried away with such thoughts. Every minute she was out there alone she was in danger.

"Now then," he whispered to himself, "if I was Shayera, where would I go?"

Girls were naturally nervous, so he figured that she'd head for shelter. There were caves marked on the map near the coast, a hamlet of small houses in the middle of the island and two large warehouses. Any of them would make good hiding places.

"_For other girls, maybe. Not Shayera," _a thought called from deep inside his mind.

The thought was right. No matter what the circumstances, he couldn't imagine Shayera cowering behind a rock or under a table. She had more sense than that. Most of the girls, and probably a few of the guys, would be looking for shelter. Anyway, to go searching every abandoned house and dingy cave would be stupid and dangerous.

Uphill. She'd go uphill as far as she could. Shayera was the kind of girl that took the hard route, knowing it was probably the safest. She'd stick to areas covered in dense forest, so that if she encountered anyone she could duck and weave through the trees. And she'd attempt to reach the highest, most concealed part of the island so she could remain hidden but still be able to see for miles around. Yes, that was her way.

After checking his map, John deduced that Shayera would have headed for the mountain on the west of the island. It wasn't too far from where he was; he'd catch up with her in no time.

"_And what then, Romeo?" _his mind echoed.

"I'll figure out the rest when I find her," he answered softly.

One might have considered talking to oneself to be a sign of insanity, but to hear his mind speak to him was a relief to John. Eight years previously, he had wandered into the kitchen thirsty after a strenuous game of baseball on the street. His mother had been at work, his sister taking a nap with her baby in one of the bedrooms, his other siblings still outside and his brother Maurice out on the town (probably). There was a bottle of Coca-Cola on the countertop, and John assumed his Mom had left it out for him, as a reward for getting a B+ on his math test. He unscrewed the cap and took three big gulps.

Maurice later discovered after coming home from a house party that his entire family was in the emergency room. John's heart stopped twice, and even after he regained consciousness the doctors were concerned about brain damage. When she heard those words, Mrs Stewart hysterically informed her eldest son that he was dead to her.

The bottle of coke it seems was spiked with vodka and amphetamines. Maurice had forgotten to bring it to the party. Two years later, he was dead. Shot to death by his own drug-dealer.

John's brain damage was subtle but evidently present. Sometimes his mother would find him staring at the wall after forgetting what he was doing, where he was, who he was. Sometimes he cried when he should have been laughing. Sometimes he had rages during the night and then calm down as soon as he woke up. When he was able to talk about his feelings, he told his mother that it was like his brain sometimes just stopped working.

Thinking about this after eight years, John felt a palpable sense of panic well up inside him. What if his brain stopped working before he had found her? What if he had a fit as some lunatic was firing on them? What if she thought he was insane?

Despite his panic, he had started to laugh.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

_Smarty pants, smarty pants,_

_We can smell your farty pants!_

Kenny Cooper was smart. Smarter than some adults, definitely smarter than most kids his age. It didn't do him a lick of good, never had. He was skinny, bespectacled and physically weak, the typical nerd. His high grades should have made up for that, but they didn't. Nerds and jocks, the popular kids and the unpopular, the Khastriya and the Pariahs. It was the same in very school across America. Some people were born to be High School successes and others born to be failures. He was born the High School failure.

Of course, there was that old lie. The one optimistic parents told their children after the wedgies, the beatings, the vilifications of the day were all over. Cheer up, darling, it's only school. The School Successes don't succeed in real life. There's no hope for the football hero after it's all over. A good brain guarantees you a good job, lots of money and a secure, happy life. What a load of bullshit.

The truth was that a good brain got you a job where you had to use it all the time. Accounting, technical stuff, banking. Not exactly well-respected professions. Kenny's father was a big man, once a sportsman himself, and his career after the heyday of education was carpenting. A noble profession, working with his own two hands. A job for heroes. The Jocks went on to work in construction, engineering, labouring and were regarded as the foundations of society. They lived in humble but secure houses and married girl-next-door types and had healthy, outdoorsy children. The popular kids went on to work in marketing, acting, sales and the like, jobs where being charismatic was a necessity. They lived in big houses and married former cheerleaders and beauty queens.

Nerds always worked under someone. They earned enough money to support their time-sucking hobbies and keep shabby accommodation. They either didn't marry or they married women who were sick of handsome love rats and were willing to take a chance on the old adage 'it's what's on the inside that counts.' They soon found out that what was on the inside was bitter and twisted and utterly selfish and eventually succumbed to a deep melancholia. Kenny's brother had married a beautiful bright-eyed girl who adored him. Ten years and two children later and she was obese, dull-witted and hopelessly alcoholic.

Shylock, that's who he was. The abusee turned abuser. Needy, grasping and desperate for a chance to get retribution. His mind conjured up the image of Shakespeare's embittered Jew, betrayed by society, by his friends and even by his own daughter suddenly given a chance to get his revenge. Sharpening the knife in court, ready to take his pound of flesh. He was Shylock all right. Dougie Piper was Antonio, but there was no Portia to defend him. No Portia at all in the Program, so Shylock could take his pound of flesh from every boy and girl on the island.

And he was permitted to spill their blood.

He was skulking in some bushes near the coast, waiting for someone to come traipsing along the beach. Someone would, eventually. He didn't have to wait long. Soon enough, three figures came into view.

One was Clark Kent. Kenny hated him, the macho man, Mr. Perfect. Bruce Wayne was behind him, rummaging through a backpack for something. Tough guy, thought he was so cool just because he had some scars and a husky voice. Then Diana Chamberlain. He hated that bitch most of all.

Little Miss Lavender Peaks, Prom Queen every year. She wouldn't have been so bad if she'd made a catty comment or two about someone else but no, she acted like butter wouldn't melt it her mouth. Kenny knew she was rotten. Rotten to the core.

He loaded up the crossbow and took aim, right at her pretty, empty head.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The pain wasn't the worst of it. The pain she could handle. It wasn't even that bad really. What really worried her was that she was feeling faint because of the thing sticking out of her leg. It was the worst possible moment to faint, and yet there was nothing she wanted more than to sink into the pile of bloodstained leaves and slip away.

_And what'll he do to you then? Have some sense, stupid girl!_

She knew she'd have to do something, and quick. Grundy was getting very close. What could she use to defend herself? The knife in her leg?

_If you pull that out, you'll bleed to death! How dumb are you?_

She pulled herself into a sitting position, too slowly for her liking but as fast as her limbs would allow her. Her muscles felt like they'd been pulled out of a refrigerator. It seemed like Grundy, who was running towards her, was moving in slow motion. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted her rucksack. It had been thrown off of her shoulder when she fell.

_Everyone was given a weapon. You never checked for yours. Get it now, quick!_

She reached out and found the strap of the bag to be just within reach. Grundy was so close she could hear him breath.

_Hurry up! You haven't a prayer empty-handed!_

She pulled down the zip so fast she scraped her fingers against the metal and thrust her hand deep inside the dark cavern. By pure chance, her hand immediately struck something cold and hard. Metal.

_Grab it! There's hope for you yet!_

She pulled it out, and by God did it weigh a ton! Grundy was so close now she could smell him, but she wasn't afraid now. She used the object to push herself to her feet. New pain roared through her leg, but she ignored it.

The object was steel, a long rod like the handle of a baseball bat topped by a sphere, about twelve inches in radius. The sphere was studded with blunt-edged spikes. It was a club of some kind, similar to a medieval mace. Such an unwieldy and heavy instrument would have intimidated another student, but not Shayera Hol. For her, it was perfect.

He was close, so close; she felt the vibrations of his heavy gait through the earth. She saw him now, eyes as wild as an animal's, frothing at the mouth, sweat running down his face. She raised her weapon and waited for him to get closer.

Ten feet.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five. _Run! It's not too late!_

Four.

Three.

Two.

One. _Swing!_

She swung the weapon, putting all ninety pounds of her weight into her arms as she thrust the studded globe towards his head. Her feet were lifted of the ground by the force. It hit him full force across the head, fracturing his jaw, puncturing his earlobe, putting dents in his very skull and knocking him into the undergrowth as though he weighed nothing. His great limbs flailed and reached at nothing. A tree root cracked as his back hit it.

The force knocked Shayera back a good three feet. She landed in a sitting position against a tree. Shockwaves rippled up and down her arms and echoed in her head, making her feel dizzy.

_Is he dead?_

The blow would have killed a grown man. The impact of the steel on the skull alone would have caved in the bone and destroyed the delicate tissue inside. But Solomon Grundy had a skull that was thicker than normal, and he survived. The brain was damaged by the blow, certainly, but he was not dead. He struggled to his feet, snorting and coughing like the archetypal bear with a sore head, and approached Shayera again. Blood streamed from his nose and his ears.

All thoughts of coaxing her, reasoning with her, convincing her to stay with him willingly had been literally knocked out of his head. He was going to have her, willing or not, dead or alive.

She was trying to stand up, but the blade in her leg was trapped under something and she couldn't get it out. Finally she just ripped the knife itself out of her own flesh, wrenching a harsh cry from her throat. Her weapon had been dropped to the side and she couldn't reach it, so she held the knife instead. She reached forward to grab her by the neck and she plunged the knife deep into his arm. It hurt, but not enough. His hand closed around her neck and he lifted her off of the ground, pushed her bodily against the tree.

She struggled, naturally. They all struggled. Remembering some of the animals he had killed over the years, Solomon grinned. His teeth were coated with blood. He slammed her head a few times off of the tree trunk, but she kept on fighting, scraping his arms with her fingernails, kicking him with her tiny feet, trying to bite his fingers. She felt like a bird, fluttering in his grasp.

Desperate now, because at any moment he could lose control and break her neck, he pulled at the straps of her pinafore-style uniform. They came loose right away and she struggled even more fiercely. Probably thought he was going to rape her, but he wasn't interested in that. Not at the moment anyway. He pulled up her shirt then, ignoring the barest flash of her pink lace bra to stare at her ribs. Each one perfectly formed, slightly poking through the flesh of her torso. Her arms were becoming a nuisance now, so with one arm he secured her across the tree trunk by pinning her under the bust and traced the outline of the tiny bones with the hand that had been around her throat.

With his finger he pushed on the bottom rib. It gave slightly. He applied more pressure, more, _more,_ until it finally cracked. She didn't scream, but rather gasped. Grundy barely notice. The feeling of satisfaction that came with the breaking of the rib was orgasmic. He reached for its twin on the other side and cracked it quickly. He was fully aroused now, and unaware that his captive had gone limp. He had cracked another two before he realized. He stopped in his tracks. Had he killed her?

Slowly, in case she woke up, he lifted her down and laid her out in the leaf litter. Her shirt was ripped open, her ribs and chest cavity exposed. That was the best part, he had always found. Breaking legs and arms were much harder when the subject was conscious. So maybe he could do those while she was out of it, and the rest when she was conscious again. If she became conscious again. There were other bones to consider too, like those in the hips and thighs. He'd never been able to explore like this with a human before, let alone a human girl… his hand reached for her skirt…

… just then, her eyes opened and a flashing object came hurtling towards his left eye. It was followed by the worst pain he had ever experienced, much worse than the head injury he had received only moments before. She had just put his eye out.

Somehow, she managed to pull herself to her feet. He swung his arm out at her wildly and caught her full force across her shoulder, sending her hurtling into the leaves again. She raised her leg, covered in blood, and sent the heel of her foot crashing into his nose, breaking the bone with an audible crunch.

Solomon fell back, and she got to her feet again. She located her club again and approached him. All reason, compassion and remorse were gone from her mind. Now there was only murderous anger. She raised the weapon and brought it down on his head. Solomon's skull exploded into a gooey mass of grey and pink residue.

It wasn't enough.

She brought it down again. The mass was broken into a thousand pieces. Again. The pieces were liquefied. Again and again and again… she kept hitting until it occurred to her that she was hitting nothing but soft earth. It also occurred to her that she was crying. She stopped, still holding the bloodied club, and wiped the tears from her eyes. She'd won. So why was she crying.

"Are you okay?"

Shayera could only turn her head as she heard the smooth voice behind her. Seeing Ivy O Hara there, all smooth red hair and sparkling blue eyes and flawless complexion, just made her aware of how much pain she was in. Her leg, her ribs, her shoulder, her neck, everywhere hurt like hell.

"I'm fine," she answered coolly, wiping some of Grundy's blood from her forehead.

"You don't look fine," Ivy said, and took a step forward. "You look injured. Did he do that to you?"

"Nothing I can't handle," said Shayera. She was already planning her escape.

"I'm sure, but men are such beasts. It must have been awful. Did he try to rape you?" Her tone was sympathetic, but Shayera had never trusted Ivy.

"No," said Shayera and got ready. Her moment was coming…

"You don't have to lie to me, I'm a girl, believe me I know," said Ivy, and then she made her move. She whipped out the pistol and fired.

But Shayera was ready. She charged at Ivy and surprised her knocking her over with her shoulder. Then, she ran as fast as she could through the forest, holding her club close to her body. She didn't have the strength for another fight, not yet. All she could do was run and hope for the best. Shots were fired behind her.

There was a bursting feeling and a searing heat in her chest, just below her arm socket. She'd been shot. But she kept running.

Ivy cursed, and looked around her at the messy foliage.

"Gross," she muttered.


	10. Chapter 10

The Pyrrhic Days

Chapter Ten

Sorry for the delay. It's hard to access the Internet since I moved house. Be assured that my fics will be updated or finished, just more slowly.

Usual warnings, I don't own crap.

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The twang of the crossbow sounded like thunder in Diana's ears, and it was like the whole world was moving in slow motion. She saw the glint of the arrow flying towards her, heard the rustle in the bushes that was surely her assailant reloading. In a single rush of colour, her life flashed before her eyes, but it moved too fast for her to fully see it.

"This is it, I'm going to die," she thought just before the arrow struck her.

There was pain, and she fell. But thank the merciful Lord Kenny Cooper's eyesight was shit. He'd aimed for her head but hit her in the upper arm instead. Another arrow was fired at her, and this one missed her by a bare inch. Then Bruce fell on top of her, hissing at her to stay down while he aimed his gun at the bushes.

Clark was lying on the sand too, but Diana wasn't paying attention. She could concentrate on nothing but the pain in her arm and the smell of the boy on top of her. He smelled like sweat, gunpowder and faded cologne. It was oddly pleasant. One of his hands was on his gun, but the other was holding her down. She wondered if he was aware he was actually groping her left breast.

The gun went off and the bushes rustled, and the three people on the beach listened with bated breath for movement. There was none. Bruce rose and proceeded cautiously to the bushes to look for himself. Diana felt a tingling sensation where he had touched her. Clark stayed very still.

"It's okay. You can get up," Bruce's voice proclaimed softly.

Diana rose with some difficulty. The shock and some blood loss was making her feel woozy.

"Who was it?" she asked.

"I dunno. Some kid with glasses. A guy. Thin blonde hair," Bruce answered casually.

"Kenny Cooper," said Clark hoarsely.

Bruce walked over to Diana and touched the arrow, gently. Clark inspected it too, but didn't touch.

"Hurt much?" Bruce asked. His face was a mask of carelessness, but his eyes held concern.

"A bit," she answered. She felt very close to fainting.

"We should move to the caves. I can get a better look at your injury there." Bruce stood up and walked a few steps before he stopped and looked back at the other two. Diana was attempting to walk, and Clark was keeping up with Bruce with little difficulty.

After staring hard at Clark for a few moments, Bruce sighed and scooped Diana into his arms. As her feet left the ground, Diana fell into a dead faint.

……………..

Inside the school building, Captain Anderton was sorting through various computer printouts, schematics and aerial photographs, occasionally stopping to jot down notes on a yellow notepad. The time was approaching seven o clock am, and the first announcement of the Program was to be made.

Finally, the time wheeled around and the broadcast was made. Anderton's snide voice was heard through hidden amplifiers all over the island.

"Good morning students, and congratulations to those of you who managed to survive through the night. To those of you that are now deceased, I'm very disappointed in you. Now here's the list of your former school friends that are now no more. Starting with the young men:"

"No 1: Seth Merchant.

No 2: Douglas Piper.

No 6: Adam Jameson."

…

Clark winced when he heard Adam's name, remembering how casually Bruce had shot him. Bruce was busy trying to revive Diana. He was barely listening.

…

"No 7: Kenny Cooper.

No. 8: Peter Baker.

No. 10: Tate Jones.

No. 11: Solomon Grundy."

"By the way, I'd like to let the person who did in Mr. Grundy know how impressed I am! I'm holding the photograph right now and I have to say, it's rather amazing! We may have our winner, folks."

…

Shayera was slumped against an embankment, clutching the bleeding wound in her side and trying not to panic about the wound in her leg. She didn't hear the announcement at all.

…

"And No. 12: Rico Jimenez."

"Now for the young ladies, who seem to be lasting longer than the young men. Buck up your game, boys!"

"No. 3: Belinda Hugo."

…

Selina, fresh out of the shower and towelling her hair dry, smiled as she thought of the look on Belinda's face.

…

"No. 8: Harley Quinn.

No. 9: Marie Steiner.

No. 13: Vicki Henderson.

No. 14: Cassie Proctor.

No. 15: Barbara Myers.

"And that's it for now, folks. A very impressive start. The danger zones for today are F3 and M8."

…

"Did you mark off the danger areas?"

Clark was taken by surprise by the question; he'd been brooding about his dead classmates. Peter and Vicki, he'd double-dated with those two before. Vicki was friendly but Peter was a bit of a snob… Solomon Grundy. Who the hell had taken on Grundy? He'd been on the receiving end of a tackle from that guy once and he'd had trouble walking for days. Perhaps Kenny and Rico tag-teamed him…why would those scumbags want to play fair?

"The map, Clark. Check the map."

Clark pulled out the map. They were safe. They were in B8.

"We're okay," he said.

Bruce pulled out a cigarette; the unspoken agreement between them was that they'd move when Diana came around. Bruce had removed the arrow and bound her wound, cutting away the sleeve of her shirt in the process. She was deep in a fitful sleep.

…

Blood was a funny thing, Diana mused hazily through her unconscious state. The sight of it had caused her to faint, and yet her whole existence revolved around it.

Rosemarie Setterton of the Tennessee Settertons came from a dignified family that had a long, noble history. Eugene Chamberlain of the Maine Chamberlains was equal to her in wealth if not quite in family. It was said that their marriage was a joining of the most aristocratic family lines in the country.

It was easy to be awed by the family, by beautiful Rosemarie and her two beautiful daughters, by the extravagance of Eugene and the playboy antics of his son. When you saw the diamonds and rubies glittering at Rosemarie's throat you were blind to how pale she was, how the veins in her tiny limbs stood out. When her eldest daughter showed off her engagement ring, given to her by the youngest son of a Kennedy, you didn't notice her too-long nose, her hollow cheeks, her general faded demeanour. Eugene was a dim-witted fool and his drug-addled son was no better, their jobs at the companies they owned were merely there to keep them out of official business.

The blood was bad, but no-one could see it. Had they been horses, they would have been recognised as hopelessly inbred and most likely put down. The principal was the same, but the perception was different. What would have been a genealogical dead end for animals was considered a respectable way of life by a faction of human beings. But when anybody mentioned the frequent illnesses that prevailed in the Chamberlain household, Rosemarie simply shrugged her thin shoulders and waved carelessly at her youngest daughter.

"Look at Diana," she would say in that airy, careless way she had. "She's never been sick a day in her life."

Well, that wasn't really true. Diana had been sick with the usual childhood illnesses. Chickenpox, colds, the flu, an unfortunate bout of food poisoning, a sprained wrist after a nasty fall from a tree, nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing compared to the three months Marianne spent in hospital with some sort of fever, or the two years of therapy Benjamin had to undergo after a brief psychotic episode. No, Diana was healthy as an ox. Tall and strong-boned with a slightly ruddy complexion and acres of thick dark hair, she stood out like a sore thumb during the family's annual picture day.

Rosemarie and Marianne floated whereas Diana galloped from place to place, all long limbs and lean muscle and coltish clumsiness. Her laugh was several octaves louder than her mother could even manage. Eugene was quite proud of this strange changeling in his family, regarding it as proof that noble blood makes the strongest children. Who cares if the first two had slight aberrations?

In fact, it was the aberrations in his own blood that stopped Eugene from considering just how long he'd not been sleeping with his wife during the approximate time she conceived Diana. The dull wits he'd been born with kept his attention away from Rosemarie's casual flirtations with the tall, dark-haired, handsome groundskeeper that lived on the property. That man was practically a peasant, the human version of a cart horse. He was friendly enough, and he seemed fond of Diana, but of a lower class certainly.

On the girl's tenth birthday, Eugene had found her in the garden with the groundskeeper. He was weaving her a small crown of white flowers with his enormous hands. Hands that tore deep roots out of the ground twirled nimbly around the thinnest of reeds as the girl watched in delight. He was good with children, Eugene intoned later to his wife, and handsome and strong. He would probably have beautiful children of his own. But the man never married…

…..

She woke up then, disoriented, she'd been so out of her mind she'd actually seen things from her parents point of view. There was a lot to consider, and her head hurt like hell. She groaned.

"You okay?"

She opened her eyes and looked over at Bruce, who was smoking away casually. Clark was nowhere to be seen. She panicked a little; Clark had left her alone with a total stranger!

"Don't worry," Bruce said softly. "He's outside getting some water."

She felt relieved, and then ashamed. Bruce had saved her life twice, after all. She opened her mouth to apologise.

"Save your breath, princess. I wouldn't trust me either," he said, and chuckled. "How's your arm?"

Oh yes. Her arm. It hurt like hell, but for a moment his wry grin had distracted her.

"It's okay," she lied.

He stared at her for a few seconds, then looked away, concentrating on his dwindling cigarette. Diana watched him smoke, made a note of his distinguishing characteristics. The stubble on his chin, the scar on his temple, his messy hair that looked somewhat jagged, his lean triangular shape. One hundred percent peasant, her mother would have said.

But her mother wasn't there, was she?


	11. Chapter 11

**The Pyrrhic Days**

I know the chapters for this story are coming out slowly, but I am working as fast as I can. I find comedy is a lot easier to write that tragedy, so every now and then I have to write something silly to stop myself getting all Emo with this fic.

As usual, I own nothing but my ideas. And sometimes even they belong to someone else.

…..

Bruce Wayne watched the dark-haired girl fall asleep again, keeping in mind the worried look on her face when she'd discovered that her boyfriend wasn't there. He hadn't been lying when he said he'd have been worried to wake up with him too. Self-awareness was a vital virtue when one had so many things against oneself, and he knew he was a scary-looking guy.

That said, he'd offered to go out and look for firewood, but Clark had insisted. That was weird. Why would he leave his girlfriend alone with a guy who had just killed two people? Why would he leave his girlfriend when she was injured with a guy they had just met? Hell, why would he leave his girlfriend full stop?

There was something not right about this situation, besides the obvious. It wasn't like Clark was a bad guy; Bruce would've gotten a vibe if he had been. His vibes had saved him from many a backstab back in his old neighbourhood.

…..

Bruce Wayne had come from a wealthy family, although you would never have known by looking at him. Even at the age of ten he'd been a scruffy, scrawny little thing. Though it wasn't really by choice. Some notion or another by his father or his mother kept constant disruptions a facet of everyday life. They were rich, his father was smart and his mother was pretty, but that didn't make them sane.

He remembered his father, the Armani suits, the smell of cigar smoke and cognac, expensive aftershave and paper. The smell of success. He remembered his mother, her elegantly coiffed hair, the tight smiles, the gems glittering against papery skin. The trophy wife. On the outside, they filled the stereotypes that society expected them to. But the stereotypes didn't really fit, and occasionally it showed.

Mr. Wayne was a gamy wolf in shark's clothing, rough and rumpled with bared teeth when he should have been sleek and smooth, streamlined. Being clever didn't make him a good businessman, and they weren't as rich as they could have been if he'd been able to keep a hold on his temper. He'd been raised in a large family and had ideas about privilege. You had to fight for what you got, and even then you were lucky to get it. Young Bruce led a sparse life, with few comforts and material possessions, under his father's tutelage.

His mother was different, not just from her husband, but from everybody. Perhaps if she hadn't married Bruce's father she would have been in a mental hospital. Bruce suspected she was bipolar, although he'd not acquired the terminology until he was at least thirteen. He'd simply called her crazy. Some days she would be happy, well dressed, singing softly to herself as she arranged flowers in a vase. Other days she'd be screaming about germs, crying streaks into her carefully-applied mascara as she scrubbed the kitchen counters with bleach. She was a hypochondriac who filled Bruce's food with all sorts of supposed remedies to keep her microscopic enemies from hurting her little boy.

They were as bad as each other, Bruce thought. He was pretty savvy from a young age, and very talented at figuring people out. He knew the youngest chambermaid was stealing jewellery from his mother three months before she figured it out. He knew his Dad was going to lose that big deal he was trying to broker with a Chinese company just by the way he never shut up about it. That didn't mean he didn't love his parents, it just meant he knew them.

And when he heard that they were dead, he wasn't even remotely surprised.

…..

Bruce lit up another cigarette, then checked his packet like an afterthought. Shit. He didn't have many left. Smoking sometimes helped him think, but he was running low on his thinking sticks. He smoked it slowly and watched Diana sleep.

Now, there was an activity that seemed to help him think. She was a little like his parents in some respects. The air of success clung to her like some nameless perfume. Her hair, even sleep-rumpled as it was, was styled to a degree that you usually saw on middle-aged women with disposable income. Her uniform was the usual mass-produced crap all the other girls wore, but her shoes were obviously expensive. Still, she didn't seem like she was well put together. Something about her clumsy, long-legged gait and her nervous stance didn't sit well with the way she should have been. Not that she wasn't gorgeous, of course, but she was like a swan trying to be a peacock. It just didn't sit right.

Clark came blundering back then, and Bruce abruptly stopped eying up his girlfriend. Not that he was afraid of the farm boy pounding him, but when one was fighting for one's life, one needed all the help one could get.

…..

John sat on a rock and watched the sun climb high in the sky. He didn't have to look at his watch to know it was coming close to noon. He'd been walking since sunrise and he was tired and hungry, but he was nearing the top of the hill so he could only afford to stop for a few minutes. Technically he couldn't afford to stop at all, but he knew if he didn't his psychosis would take over. Some weird feeling was creeping up on him, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Then there was a rustle in the foliage just behind him. He turned quickly to face a possible attack.

But, as it happened, he was damn lucky. The person he'd been trying to find had stumbled across him.

For what seemed like an eternity, all he could do was stare at her, his mouth trying to form words but failing. He just couldn't find the words to describe what he saw. Shayera was, to put it frankly, a mess. There wasn't a spot on her that wasn't covered with blood. There were black circles under her eyes and her hair was muddy brown, stuck to her scalp in ragged clumps making her look like some kind of ancient witch. Most frightening, however, was the look in her eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of a rabid animal.

He gulped thickly and moved towards her slowly. Her response was to raise the weapon she was carrying, the one practically dripping with gore, in front of her.

"Stay away from me! I'll kill you!"

He was relieved to hear her voice, so much so that many of his other fears were stripped away. If she could talk, she hadn't lost her mind completely. Now it was only a matter of talking her down. He eyed her weapon warily. She had probably killed someone with that in self-defence. Naturally it would have made her nervous.

"Shayera, it's me. You know, John Stewart?"

Her eyes flickered, for just a moment, but they were still unfocused and darting around a lot. They were very red too…could she even see him properly? His eyes drifted to a series of dark bruises on her neck. He knew from reading medical books that strangulation caused burst blood vessels in the eyes that distorted vision.

"Shayera? Can you see me?" he asked in a daringly loud voice. Her hearing might have been affected too…

She squinted and her weapon fell to thump at her side. It seemed she didn't have enough energy left to keep it raised. He watched her carefully, looking for any signs that she recognized him. For a moment it looked like she was going to say something and he strained to hear. But instead she fainted dead away.

He leapt forward to catch her just before she hit the ground. Instantly his hand was coated with an unmistakable sticky wetness. Just then, the psychosis decided to kick in. That familiar cold feeling descended over his entire body and his mind went completely blank.

Except for one phrase, repeated over and over again.

_She's going to die._

…..

Kelly Beauregard and Jen Sellers had been friends since they were five years old, and they'd never had any problems communicating with each other. When they were seven Jen accidentally ruined Kelly's favourite Barbie and told her outright, without hesitation. When they were eleven Jen pushed Kelly out of a tree as a joke. Kelly broke her arm and had to spend the whole summer in a cast, but she forgave Jen straight away. When they were thirteen, Kelly kissed a boy she knew Jen liked, but Jen didn't mind at all. She figured keeping her friend was more important than some icky boy.

Opposites attract, and that seemed the case with the two girls. Kelly was tall and slender, with long blonde hair she usually tied back in a tight chignon with a single curl cascading in front. She liked to consider herself glamorous, wearing only red lipstick and no other makeup despite the fact she was prone to acne. She talked through her nose like Katherine Hepburn and wore a girdle under her school shirt to give the illusion of curves.

Jen, on the other hand, was the consummate tomboy. Her black curls were cropped short, pixie style, and she was small with a tendency towards chubbiness. She had an abiding love affair with the colour pink, the least sophisticated colour in the spectrum. She had been very distressed when she developed breasts and attempted to hide them with baggy clothes, only changing her mind when Kelly let her know how jealous she was.

Nevertheless, the girls had several things in common. They both had a huge crush on Clark Kent. They both hated Diana Chamberlain, although they were nice to her face. They both had binge-drinking sessions on weekends, whether they were together or not. They had the same taste in music and in boys and they could talk to each other for hours about anything.

But on the island, they found talking to each other was almost impossible. They'd been together for eleven years, every day. They'd even found each other in the midst of the Program's chaos. But even if they did manage to defend themselves against the other students, even if they did kill all the other contestants, the two of them would be left. And only one was allowed leave the island alive.

They sat together in the bay, sifting the soft sand between their fingers and sneaking glances at each other. On the outside it looked as though they were sharing companionable silence, but really they were wondering how, if it came down to it, one would deliver the fatal blow to the other.

"_She's always taking the boys I like. She says she's sorry, but she never stops. She doesn't care if she hurts me."_

"She _borrowed my favourite shirt and ripped it. She didn't bother apologising; she just assumed I'd forgive her. What kind of friend would do that?"_

"_She's such a suck-up. "You look great today, Diana! Did you get your hair done?" She hates Diana! She's so fake!"_

"_She'll get me first. She's sneaky like that."_

"_She'll get me first. She acts so sweet, but I know what she's really like."_

Kelly rummaged through her bag and pulled out the bread they'd been supplied with. She broke it in half and gave one half to Jen. Jen smiled and thanked her. Kelly told her she was welcome. They were the first words they had said to each other since the game started.

But when Kelly took out the bread, she'd peeked a look at her supplied weapon. It was a small bottle of hydrochloric acid. Kelly watched Jen munch the bread as she stared off into the distance. Kelly unscrewed the cap off of the little bottle and grabbed her bottle of water. Then she tipped the contents into the water.

"Here, you must be thirsty," Kelly said, handing the bottle to Jen.

Jen smiled and took two gulps of the water.

"_I guess I was wrong. Maybe I can trust her…"_


End file.
